Great Falls, MT
Great Falls is in the Missouri River valley between the Rocky Mountain Front to the west and the high plains to the east. The civilian KGTF and the adjacent military Malmstrom AFB share rich Cold War history. During WWII this was Great Falls Army Air Base — a B-17 training center and the U.S. terminus of the Lend-Lease pipeline that ferried 8,000+ aircraft (P-39s, P-63s, B-25s, A-20s, C-47s) from American factories through Canada, into Fairbanks, and on to Soviet Siberia (the ALSIB route). After WWII, Great Falls AFB became the SOLE training site for U.S. Berlin Airlift C-54 crews — the runway was transformed with radio beacons to simulate Tempelhof's short, building-shadowed approach. Hundreds of pilots learned the airlift's steep dive-and-slam approach here. Renamed Malmstrom AFB in 1955 for Col Einar Malmstrom, a WWII fighter pilot and POW. Today Malmstrom is a Minuteman III ICBM base; KGTF the civil airport hosts commercial and GA traffic. The First Peoples Buffalo Jump, Lewis & Clark interpretive center, and Charlie Russell Museum are nearby; Glacier National Park is 90 nm northwest.
Adjacent to KGTF Great Falls. Malmstrom AFB was the only Berlin Airlift C-54 aircrew training site in the United States during 1948-1949 — the runway temporarily transformed with radio beacons to simulate Tempelhof's short approach with surrounding buildings. Hundreds of pilots, many recalled from WWII duty, learned to "slam" a 70,000-pound C-54 onto a short runway here before deploying to Wiesbaden and Fassberg in Germany. WWII heritage: a B-17 training base, then the U.S. terminus of the Lend-Lease ALSIB ferry route — ~8,000 American aircraft passed through here on the way to the Soviet Union. Today Malmstrom is one of three Minuteman III ICBM bases in the U.S., with 150 silos spread across central Montana. Active military airfield (no public landings); the Malmstrom Museum & Air Park outside the gate has a Lend-Lease P-39 Airacobra, a Berlin Airlift C-54 Skymaster, an F-101 Voodoo, and a Minuteman missile.
On the uphill edge of Butte sits a hole that filled itself with poison. The Berkeley Pit was an open-pit copper mine from 1955 to 1982; a mile long, half a mile wide, around 1,800 feet deep. When the pumps were shut off, groundwater rose and turned it into a lake of acid laced with arsenic, cadmium, and dissolved metal; some of the most contaminated water in the country and one of the most expensive Superfund sites going. From the air the color gives it away: rust-red near the surface fading to a sick lime green where the copper concentrates. It has killed migrating geese by the thousands when flocks set down on it. Butte called itself the Richest Hill on Earth for the copper that built the place; the pit is what the bottom of that wealth looks like.
A 200-foot limestone cliff used for nearly 2,000 years by Plains Indians — Shoshone, Bannock, Blackfeet, Crow, Salish — to hunt bison by stampeding herds over the edge. From the cliff base, archaeologists have recovered bone beds dozens of feet deep. The site is now a state park with interpretive trails. Less visited than the famous Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta, but the geography is identical: a flat plain ending abruptly in a tall cliff, with the gathering basin behind it where bison were herded for days before the final drive. Sobering and significant.
A 16-mile drive from Bozeman, Bridger Bowl is the local-favorite ski area — non-profit, lift-served terrain that includes the famous "Ridge" hike-to skiing where powder-day regulars wait for the Bridger Bowl ridge cam to show fresh tracks. From the air, the ski area sits high on the east face of the Bridger Range, with chairlift lines cut as visible scars through the trees and the chair towers reading as dots when low sun catches them. The "Schlasman's Chair" zone (added in 2008) opened terrain previously only accessible by hiking. Skiers wear avalanche beacons here — the area is famous for managed but real avalanche terrain.