BILLINGS

city, seat (1883) of Yellowstone county, south-central Montana, U.S., on the Yellowstone River, 3,119 feet (951 m) above sea level. Established (1882) by the Northern Pacific Railway, it was named for Frederick Billings, the company's president. Prosperity, spurred by the railroad's arrival, collapsed after 1887 but was renewed after 1900 with the growing cattle industry and irrigated agriculture. Billings is the metropolis of the Midland Empire, a rangeland and irrigated river valley region producing sugar beets and varied truck crops, wool, and livestock. Beet sugar and oil refining, meat-packing, and flour milling are important, and tourism contributes increasingly to the economy. Eastern Montana College (1927) and Rocky Mountain College (1947) are in the city. Billings is headquarters for the Custer National Forest, containing Grasshopper Glacier, with millions of grasshoppers embedded in its ice. Pictograph Cave State Monument, 7 miles (11 km) southeast, has prehistoric artifacts. Inc. 1885. Pop. (1990) city, 81,151; Billings MSA, 113,419.