The Billings Name in Montana and North Dakota

Sometimes you find family connections where you least expect them. I started out early this morning for my month-long journey and hadn't really intended to post on the blog tonight. After all, what is there to say about eastern Montana and North Dakota, other than that the road just goes on and on and on and on? Then, as I was turning off Interstate 90 to stop in Billings, I had one of those "well, duh" moments. There was the family connection, right there on the exit sign, "Billings."

Admittedly, it's not a very close family connection, but Billings, Montana is named after a distant relative, Frederick Billings. You have to go back a few generations from Frederick and Titus to find the common ancestor, but I think his name was Richard, and he lived in England.

Anyway, Frederick Billings was born in Vermont in 1823, earned a law degree at the University of Vermont, and then moved to San Francisco during the California Gold Rush. In 1869, he purchased the George Perkins Marsh estate in Woodstock, Vermont and continued to farm using the land management principles introduced by Marsh, a pioneer in land conservation and reforestation. [This farm is still a working farm. Randl and I stopped there a few years ago on our trip to New England. The home and part of the farm make up the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park.]

Frederick Billings was a part owner of the Northern Pacific Railway and served as its president from 1879-1881. Established as a railroad town in 1882, Billings, Montana was named after Frederick. Though he never owned a home in the new town, he did donate the money to establish the first school there, as well as the First Congregational Church.

Coming into western North Dakota, I drove through a most interesting area that is part of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Part of the badlands of North Dakota, these land formations are coincidentally in Billings County, so there is yet another family connection. I stopped to take a couple of pictures, but they really don't do the place justice. The geological formations are beautiful (in a strange, moon-scape sort of way) and many of them have rings of red rock around them, much like southern Utah.