We'd never heard of the city of Bozeman, Montana before planning for this trip, but we came here, and stayed a few days, because it was to be the staging post for our Winter expedition into Yellowstone National Park. Bozeman has a population of nearly 50,000 and is the fourth largest city in the state of Montana. We arrived at BZN, the city's substantial international airport. We think most visitors arriving here were planning to ski at the nearby Big Sky mountain.
Old poster on display in Bozeman's Museum of the Rockies. We travelled in much more comfort!
This statue combines two evident passions of Bozeman.
In the 1860's, John Bozeman established a branch off the old Oregon Trail leading to the mining centre of Virginia City. A town was founded (1864) to take advantage of fertile soil.
Pocket park on Main Street backed by a shop-side town mural.
Beautiful light in Main Street at dusk.
Bozeman is a delightful town, covered in snow and pretty in an "old western town" kind of way. The residents that we met spoke with a friendly cowboy drawl, and always went out of their way to welcome or help us. We stayed at the Element Hotel in downtown - other hotels we considered were out of town a few kilometers for guests with cars - and were thus able to enjoy walks along Main Street. The street is populated with restaurants and bars plus expensive art, craft and fashion stores. Apart from Ace Hardware and a cute deli, the street seemed to cater to students and well-heeled visitors, rather than local residents, who must mostly shop at nearby malls.
The Element Hotel in downtown Bozeman was a very pleasant place to stay.
View of Bozeman's backdrop as seen from our hotel room.
Back from Main Street, we walked around a snowy grid of very pleasant residential streets, some of which featured houses of historical significance, judging by plaques mounted nearby. For more substantial trips around town, Bozeman has 3 or 4 free bus loops, which should be a boon for locals and visitors alike, but most people seem to just drive around town. The only people who knew anything about the bus routes seemed to be the bus drivers!
Historical cottage on N Tracy Ave, just off downtown.
Historical photograph of Crow encampment in the Bozeman region. The Crow were mostly displaced by other tribes which had earlier and better access to guns, and eventually negotiated a sizeable reservation near Billings, Montana.
Bozeman is the seat of the University of Montana whose campus is just out of downtown. The University established the Museum of the Rockies which has a fabulous exhibit of dinosaur skeletons including the biggest Tyrannosaurus rex skull ever found. Apart from paleontology, the museum has great exhibits devoted to Yellowstone National Park, and the lives and culture of local Indian tribes (but not too much on their sad demise).
Statue of #BigMike, cast from a mould of the bones of a T-Rex discovered in Montana in 1988 by a local rancher.
Volunteer palenontological work on display in the Museum.
A truly magnificent display of Tyrannosaurus Rexes at this Museum.
We had no trouble finding good espresso coffee in Main Street, the barista in one cosy coffee shop (Zocalo) remembered our unusual order after just one visit! To keep off the slippery sidewalks at night, we mostly dined at The Squire attached to our hotel where the food was excellent, and where we met a most friendly manager and a server who had worked in a horse ranch in Western Australia. Even given that these people work in the service industry, we were most impressed with the country style friendliness we encountered in Bozeman.
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