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I know Red Lodge, grew up 12 miles north in Roberts. Red Lodge was our suburb. Full of cowboys (I mean real, serious cowboys like the Greenough boys and girls, with names like Turk and Alice and the Linderman family, rodeo riders extraodinaire) whose names are attached to heroic rodeo rides and bar fights Hollywood couldn't recreate. Real mountain men like Jimmy Joe and country music sensations like Patsy Montana and Irene Linderman. Kissed my first girl in the alley behind Flash's gift store. I was 12. My grandfather told the story of the enterprising gas station owner who, upon the opening of the Beartooth Highway, a route that took you several thousand feet up from the valley floor from Red Lodge to Cooke City, began to stop tourists with the proposition he would exchange their "low altitude" air in their tires for the necessary "high altitude" air they would encounter on their journey to the Top of The World. For a fee, of course. I remember the See 'Em Alive Zoo and the zookeeper Elmer Neff who gave us a magical experience with his little zoo. You want history? Put down the dry, fact packed books and stop an old timer in Red Lodge and ask him about the place. A cup of coffee will buy you a rare experience. Guaranteed.