I Ate My Way Through Montana’s Cattle Country—and Found the Perfect Steak

As I stood atop a rocky precipice in central Montana, the most striking thing before me was nothing. More precisely, it was space: the all-encompassing nothingness for which the West is famous. It was off this cliff that thundering herds of bison once jumped, driven to their death by the Native peoples who hunted them for their meat, hides, and bones. “At least 13 tribes used the jump, including Shoshone-Bannock, Nez Perce, Assiniboine, and Crow,” Clark Carlson-Thompson, the manager at First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park, told me. “The bone bed is 18 to 22 feet deep. A lot of bison went over that cliff.”

The park was my first stop on a journey across Montana’s vast grasslands to trace the story of the West through its cattle ranches and the meat they produced. As I looked up from the site of so many bison deaths, I surveyed the plain of brilliant green that seemed to stretch for miles to the horizon. The view is so expansive, the local joke goes, you could watch your dog run away for three days.

I hiked back to my car. The sun was low in the sky, and I was getting hungry. Fortunately, I didn’t need to send any shaggy beasts over a cliff to procure my dinner. A short drive away, in the tiny settlement of Ulm, was the Beef N Bone Steakhouse, a casual restaurant with a fireplace that specializes in Montana beef and bison. Bison meat is often touted for its health benefits because it has far less fat than beef, but the lack of fat rendered the steak a little too lean for my taste. 

The history of Montana, where I live, is in many ways the history of cattle ranching. Native peoples hunted the great herds on these grassy plains for generations, and the animals were essential to survival. But by the end of the 1870s the bison had been nearly wiped out by settlers and the U.S. Army and were replaced by cattle, which could be more easily herded and driven to market. The beef industry was central to life in Montana during the 19th and early 20th centuries, feeding people who were mining gold and copper and cutting timber. 

After dinner I drove almost an hour east to Fort Benton, where I stayed at the elegant Grand Union Hotel, a slice of Montana’s 19th-century history. Founded in 1846, Fort Benton lured cowboys and miners who arrived on horseback or by steamboat on the Missouri River.

Among the first ranchers was Conrad Kohrs, a fortune seeker from Holstein, in what is now Germany. He arrived in 1862, during the Treasure State’s gold rush, and became a butcher, selling beef to hungry miners. As their numbers continued to grow, Kohrs purchased a ranch in the Deer Lodge Valley, a vast meadowland near Butte; 20 years later, he had increased his holdings to more than 1 million acres and 50,000 head of cattle.

I spent a couple of days in Butte, one of the places Kohrs did business, wandering among the remnants of the once-great mining town. At its height some 100,000 people called it home; the population now hovers around 36,000. A giant open pit sits in the center of town, a lasting scar from the ravages of mining. 

I checked in to Hotel Finlen, a French-inspired building from 1924. Its glory is somewhat faded and the refurbished rooms are small, but the hotel is comfortable and the lobby, with its high ceilings and chandeliers, is grand and well preserved.

Butte has many prosperous-looking historic buildings, which may explain why 1923, the prequel to the hit TV series Yellowstone, was filmed there. For dinner, I went to Casagranda’s Steakhouse, which occupies a 1900s brick warehouse on what feels like the edge of town. The rib eye—sourced, like all of the restaurant’s beef, from ranches in the Rocky Mountains­—was rubbed with a savory spice blend. The center was medium rare, a garnet shade, and so tender I could cut it with a fork. It might have been one of the best steaks I have ever eaten.

The following day I drove about a half-hour north to the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site. The National Park Foundation bought the land from Conrad Kohrs’s grandson in the early 1970s and it now operates as a working, 19th-century-style cattle ranch with cows, chickens, and horses. “This area is a sea of grass,” a volunteer told me. “Beef is about all you can grow.” Staffers and volunteers role-play as cowboys and camp cooks. As I sipped a strong, robust coffee that was brewed over a smoky campfire, I was reminded that a scene from 1923 was shot there, with mountains as a backdrop. 

While cattle barons may seem like a throwback, their spirits still rule in Big Sky Country. Sprawling ranches are dotted with hundreds of Hereford, shorthorn, and longhorn cattle and the cowboys who herd them. Cowboy culture persists, though it has been modernized with things like microchipped cows and GPS trackers; it won’t be long, they say, before drones will do the herding.

Ranch ownership has changed, as well. Montana’s wide-open spaces have exerted a powerful pull on wealthy out-of-staters; Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, and Rupert Murdoch are among those who own trophy spreads. 

Though they face their share of challenges, smaller family ranches survive and are looking for ways to thrive. On my last day, I drove to Helena, Montana’s capital, where I met Cole Mannix, cofounder and president of the Old Salt Co-Op, a meat supplier that sources beef from five local farms, including his family’s ranch in the Blackfoot Valley.

During the pandemic, Mannix told me, with meatpacking staff falling ill and restaurants closing, the supply chain for cattle processing broke down. Rising land prices and competition from cheaper foreign beef had already been challenges. Mannix and other ranching families decided it was time to eliminate the middleman and sell their beef on their own. Today, much of what they raise is sold in Montana.

Mannix also owns and runs two restaurants, including the Old Salt Outpost, a small burger shop inside the Gold Bar saloon in downtown Helena. The burgers are made with grass-fed beef raised by the local ranches; the potatoes, from a farm 60 miles away, are fried in beef fat.

Across the street is Mannix’s second restaurant, the Union, a modern wood-fired grill and butcher shop with meat sourced from the ranches in the Old Salt Co-Op. It serves different steak cuts nightly. I ordered the well-marbled rib eye, medium rare, smothered in marrow butter with a side of smashed purple potatoes. It was, in a word, delicious. And knowing it was part of a centuries-long tradition on the prairies of Montana made it taste even better. 

A version of this story first appeared in the May 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “A Taste of the Old West.”