A Taste of the Old West

Tracing Montana’s cattle culture, from wild buffalo to grass-fed steak.

- By Jim Robbins

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 (entrées $20–$51), 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.