Not surprisingly, the stay-at-home order has prompted many in Billings to seek refuge from the confines of home and head to our local trails. 

The City of Billings has a permanently installed trail traffic counter, called an eco-counter, on the Kiwanis Trail, and this tracker reported 1,100 more uses during the month of March 2020 over the previous year.

The Kiwanis Trail begins at the Yellowstone River Road underpass (north of Two Moon Park) and ends at Mary Street in the Heights. From March 1-April 1, the counter detected 6,227 uses in 2020; there were 5,150 during the same period in 2019. 

March 29, 2020 saw the highest count, with 563 uses on a single day; whereas the peak count in 2019 was 364. 

To get a more comprehensive report on trail use, portable counters are installed on different trails on a rotating basis in summer. A full report is given in winter of every year, and the City of Billings posts their annual reports here, in the non-motorized transportation column.