Montana is famous for its wide-open spaces—huge skies, wild landscapes, and endless horizons. Most travelers who visit the state head straight to well-known places like Big Sky or Yellowstone National Park. But very few take the time to explore the eastern part of the state, where the Great Plains stretch out in quiet, untouched beauty.
In this vast, open land, you’ll find Medicine Rocks State Park—a small, 330-acre park that most people never even hear about. The scenery here is pure Great Plains Badlands—rugged, peaceful, and far away from the crowds. It’s so special that even Teddy Roosevelt fell in love with it. When he visited back in the 1800s, he wrote in his book Hunting Trips of a Ranchman that it was “as fantastically beautiful a place as I have ever seen.”
The park sits right between the town of Baker and the tiny community of Ekalaka. It’s not the easiest place to get to—the nearest major airport is in Billings, about 3.5 hours away. Because of that, not many people make the trip. In 2023, only around 21,000 visitors came here. To give you an idea of how quiet that is, Glacier National Park had nearly 2.9 million visitors that same year! But that’s exactly what makes Medicine Rocks so special—it’s a hidden gem where you can truly get away from it all.
People come to Medicine Rocks for the peace and quiet, to camp under its strange, beautiful sandstone pillars—some of which look like they’ve been carved out by nature, full of holes like Swiss cheese. The park was named an International Dark Sky Sanctuary in 2020, which means it’s one of the best places in the country to see the stars, with almost no light pollution. If you love wildlife, you’ll also find plenty here—mule deer, antelope, grouse, and wild turkeys all call this place home.
If you really want to experience solitude, visit in the winter, when almost no one else is around. Camping is open year-round, and as General Manager Garrett Jericoff said, if you come during the colder months, you’ll likely have the whole park to yourself. Imagine having miles of quiet land, endless starry skies, and roaming wildlife all just for you—no crowds, no noise, just pure nature.
For travelers who do make the journey east into Montana’s Great Plains, there are eight campsites available at Medicine Rocks State Park. They’re first-come, first-served, so you don’t need reservations. You can bring your dog too, as long as it’s on a leash (no longer than eight feet). Drinking water is available all year, so you don’t have to worry about that.
Campsite prices range from $4 to $34 per night, depending on the season—winter and spring are the cheapest times to stay. There’s also an $8 entry fee for out-of-state visitors, but if you’re from Montana and you’ve already paid the $9 state parks fee with your vehicle registration, you get in for free.