Nate Luebbe
Southeast Montana’s four Dinosaur Trail stops are spread across a wide stretch of eastern Montana—connected by long roads, wide-open prairie and the kind of sky you don’t see anywhere else. This three-day road trip strings them together, moving from the newest stop on the trail to the oldest, with badlands detours, river towns and ranch-country miles in between. It’s roughly 280 miles of driving total, and worth every one of them.
Start in Roundup, the newest stop on the Montana Dinosaur Trail and home to the Musselshell Valley Historical Museum. The museum’s Dino Depot exhibit is the draw—a growing collection of fossils pulled directly from Musselshell County ground, including a 3D-printed replica skull of Sir William, a teratophoneus—a tyrannosaur discovered 30 miles northeast of town and one of only five such models in existence. The Earth Sciences Foundation has been actively excavating fossils in the area, and the finds keep coming.
Musselshell Valley Historical Museum, Nathan Satran Photography
Beyond the dinosaurs, the Musselshell Valley Historical Museum is packed with Roundup history—a one-room schoolhouse, a coal mining exhibit, taxidermy, pioneer artifacts and more. Admission is free. The museum runs seasonally, so check ahead before your visit. From Roundup, head east through the Bull Mountains and along US Highway 12 toward Miles City, then pick up I-94 east toward Glendive. The drive is about three hours with good light and open country most of the way.
Overnight in Glendive.
Glendive is the dinosaur heartland of eastern Montana, and it earns the title. Spend the morning at the Frontier Gateway Museum to meet Margie—a full-size cast of a locally found Struthiomimus—and to get your Dinosaur Trail passport stamped. Then head up into Makoshika State Park.
Margie the Struthiomimus, Courtesy of Frontier Gateway Museum
Montana’s largest state park sits just southeast of downtown, rising dramatically from the Yellowstone River valley into more than 11,500 acres of Hell Creek Formation badlands. Visit the refurbished visitor center for the Triceratops skull and paleontology displays, then take your time on the trails. The Cap Rock Trail is short and rewarding; the Diane Gabriel Trail brings you past a fossilized hadrosaur in the ground. If you want to go deep into the canyon, plan a few hours.
Makoshika State Park, Nathan Satran Photography
Return to Glendive for dinner. Walk the downtown river path before dark—the town has real character, and the Yellowstone here is wide and moving, and worth a long look.
Overnight in Glendive.
Head south from Glendive on I-94 east to Wibaux, then take MT Highway 7 south into Carter County. The landscape opens and empties as you drive, giving way to rolling badlands and big ranch country by the time you reach Ekalaka, about 109 miles and under two hours from Glendive.
Carter County Museum, Visit Southeast Montana
The Carter County Museum is the crown jewel of Southeast Montana paleontology—Montana’s first county museum, the first in the state to display dinosaur fossils, and still one of the finest small-city natural history museums in the American West. The T. rex collection alone is remarkable; add in the Edmontosaurus, the pterosaur, the complete Triceratops skull and the hadrosaur that’s one of only five of its kind in the U.S., and you’ve got a place that paleontologists and curious travelers return to again and again.
If there’s time, drive into Medicine Rocks State Park area before heading home. The formations there are unlike anything else in Montana, and the roads through Carter County backcountry make for a fitting close to a trip spent in deep time.
