Dillon, Montana: This is our last on-the-road overnite stop before getting home, when we've been to the Canadian Rockies as we have the last two summers. Dillon is a funky little railroad town in the middle of nowhere.
The intermountain West is dotted with these little burgs, each as much trainyard as town. As we noted earlier on this trip, Jasper in Alberta is another such, and almost equally remote.
As trains have become less labor-intensive, with the passing of the caboose signalling the reduction in train crew and ingenious machines replacing much track crew, rail towns have had to find other excuses to exist, other sources of income, and most have done so.
Dillon has become a supply center for surrounding ranches and home to a branch campus of U of MT. They also do some tourist business for those just passing through on Interstate 15 and as a base camp for those who explore, hunt and fish the still-wild backcountry hereabouts. It's not so very far from Yellowstone National Park, after all, maybe 60 miles northwest of the park's northwest corner.
