South Side Cannabis Guide: Livingston, Montana

Livingston was built by the Northern Pacific Railway in 1882 as the jumping-off point for Yellowstone, and the depot at the end of Main Street still looks the part. The trains are freight now, but the town of roughly eight thousand kept its role as a gateway: US Highway 89 runs south from here through Paradise Valley to the park's north entrance at Gardiner, the only Yellowstone gate open to cars all year. Fly fishing, ranching, an unusually dense population of writers and artists, and a wind that regularly tops fifty miles an hour round out the local character.

Park County backed I-190 in 2020 and collects a 3% local-option tax, with the revenue going into county services including the sheriff's office, so a recreational purchase totals 23%. The market here is small and stable: a handful of licensed counters serving a local base plus the seasonal traffic moving between Bozeman and the park.

Two names anchor the retail. Top Shelf Botanicals opened a relocated Livingston dispensary at 1404 East Park Street on May 23, 2026, which puts it directly on the main corridor through town. Apogee Gardens operates south of Interstate 90 on Highway 89, about two miles down toward Paradise Valley at the old Pop Stand site along the Yellowstone River, and also runs a Helena store. Between the two you have one counter for people already in town and one positioned for anyone heading south toward Emigrant, Pray, or Gardiner.

Initiative 190 carried Montana with about 57% of the vote in November 2020. Adult possession turned legal on January 1, 2021, and the first recreational receipts printed exactly one year later. By January 2026 the state had crossed $1 billion in cumulative adult-use revenue, and 2025 finished as the biggest year yet at roughly $327 million in combined medical and recreational sales, about 90% of that recreational. Cannabis is now a normal part of main-street commerce here, with one of the highest storefront-per-resident ratios in the country.

The thing that confuses visitors is the county map. Adult-use retail is allowed only where a majority backed I-190 - the green counties - while the red half of Montana stays closed until its own voters flip it. Custer County did exactly that in November 2024, and Miles City started selling recreational product on January 1, 2025. Cities get a say too. Billings voters barred adult-use storefronts inside the city limits in November 2021, which is why the recreational shops serving Billings sit in Lockwood and Laurel instead.

Money and limits are simple once you know them. Recreational purchases carry a 20% state tax; a registered patient pays 4%. Most counties tack on a local-option tax of up to 3%. The daily ceiling is one ounce of flower, and inside that ounce you may not exceed 8 grams of concentrate or 800 milligrams of edible THC. Two mature plants and two seedlings per adult are legal at home, locked and out of sight.

Two changes reshaped 2025 and 2026. SB 375 and HB 49 pulled almost every hemp-derived THC gummy and seltzer off gas-station coolers, pushing that demand into licensed stores. Then HB 636 cut edible servings from 10 milligrams to 5 on July 1, 2026, so the gummy you bought last spring is packaged differently now.

Montana retail is dominated by vertically integrated homegrown chains rather than national multistate operators. The names you will see across multiple towns include Bloom Montana, Lionheart Cannabis, Top Shelf Botanicals, Elevated, Lone Peak Cannabis Company, SweetGrass, Seed of Life Labs, Frosteez, Honey Sour, Dancing Goat Gardens, and Apogee Gardens. Because the same license covers cultivation and the sales floor, house-grown flower usually carries the store name on the jar, and the in-house cartridge or gummy line is the cheapest thing on the menu. Cross-shopping matters more here than brand loyalty: a strain that costs $12 a gram in one town may be $7 forty miles away.

Prices keep sliding while volume climbs: 2025 set a sales record even as per-gram pricing fell, and the first five months of 2026 ran ahead of 2025 on the recreational side while medical kept shrinking. SB 27 froze new licenses through July 1, 2027, so the shop count is fixed and competition is playing out on price and loyalty programs instead of new storefronts. Red counties holding opt-in votes are the only source of new territory.