Ballantine, MT

Ballantine is a Yellowstone County census-designated place about nine miles northeast of Billings along Interstate 94. Most residents live on scattered farms and ranches around the townsite. The railroad established Ballantine as a station in 1896; by 1907 the place had a post office and had entered the Huntley Project, the federal irrigation district built across the Yellowstone Valley. That shift put a railroad stop inside a much larger water-and-farm system.

Water still defines the local map. The Huntley Project draws from the Yellowstone River through a 32-mile main canal and a network of laterals and drains, with Ballantine among the towns receiving project water. About a mile east of Ballantine, a 35-foot canal drop lifts water toward roughly 5,000 acres. Alfalfa, hay, sugar beets, silage, pasture, and small grains grow across the district, while Huntley Project K-12 Schools serve the surrounding communities. Ballantine's farms sit inside an irrigation system that is both infrastructure and local history across the valley.