The town was a station stop on the transcontinental main line of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad ("the Milwaukee Road"); it was also the southern terminus of the White Sulphur Springs and Yellowstone Park Railway, which ran from Ringling to White Sulphur Springs.

Ringling served as a community center for ranchers and homesteaders in the vicinity, but the town's population declined throughout most of the twentieth century as the region's agricultural activity dwindled.

He also owned a summer home and spa in White Sulphur Springs, and considerable ranch land in the area.

The lower Shields Valley (which contains Ringling and environs) has one of the warmest average January temperatures in the state of Montana, due to chinook winds.

This same consistent warming was responsible for the ice-free corridor which possibly enabled the ancestors of most Native Americans to enter the mainland of North America during the Pleistocene.