Joliet, MT

Joliet is a Carbon County town on Montana Highway 212, positioned between Billings and the Beartooth Mountains. Rock Creek runs south of town, and the mountain front begins to rise west toward Red Lodge. The Rocky Fork & Cooke City Railway made Joliet a shipping point in 1892, and the post office followed the next year. That history still sits behind the main street, where ranch country, highway traffic, town services, and school events share the same small grid through each season.

Joliet Public Schools serves kindergarten through 12th grade from its Park Street campus, with the J-Hawks bringing sports, performances, meetings, and school traditions into the local calendar. Town Hall handles utilities, codes, elected officials, and other municipal business, while Billings supplies the bigger-city trips. Joliet's character comes from the distance between those two poles: a compact Carbon County town with a full school system, an open valley around it, and the Beartooths waiting at the western end of the road.