Choteau, MT

Choteau is the Teton County seat on Montana's Rocky Mountain Front. The 2020 census counted 1,721 residents. A.B. Hamilton established a trading post here in 1873, the town was platted in 1883, and incorporation followed in 1913. Choteau takes its name from Pierre Chouteau Jr., the French fur trader and explorer whose name also appears on a Montana county. Mountains such as Mount Frazier, Old Baldy, and Ear Mountain rise nearby, and Freezout Lake to the south draws huge flocks of migrating birds.

Dinosaurs are the local hook, but they sit inside a wider ranching and county-seat landscape. Egg Mountain, west of town near Bynum, became famous after 1978 discoveries of Maiasaura nests and young, work that eventually gave Montana its state fossil. The Old Trail Museum keeps that story in town, while the Montana Dinosaur Center in Bynum connects visitors with fieldwork and paleontology. Choteau Public Schools serve the local school map, and the Teton River runs through the surrounding valley. Choteau is a place where a courthouse town, a trading post, a bird lake, and one of the most talked-about dinosaur finds in the West all meet at the edge of the mountains.