Garfield County in context

Adjacent counties in the the Big Dry and Breaks corridor. Garfield County shares the eastern plains stock dam system with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

SNOTEL station-by-station read for Garfield County. The dashboard above gives current aggregate; this section shows where the water actually is.

Garfield County has no mountain snowpack of its own — it sits deep in the plains where stock dams and intermittent creek flows from Big Dry Creek and its tributaries are the primary livestock water source. Winter snowfall accumulating on the high breaks provides modest runoff into earthen reservoirs, and ranchers track soil moisture and late-winter snow depth carefully as a proxy for spring fill.

Basin Index: Big Dry Creek watershed shows minimal baseflow; stock dam levels depend almost entirely on winter snow accumulation and spring precipitation. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-09-08): Worst class D1 (moderate) over 11% of the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 100%, D1 11%, D2 0%, D3 0%, D4 0%. Station snapshot as of September 17, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.

Two-Week Rainfall

Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Garfield County · as of 2026-09-17

Observed detail: 2 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.09 in.

Forecast source: NWS/NOAA api.weather.gov (days 1–7) blended with Open-Meteo gridded model (days 8–14). The next-14-day total is model-derived — NOAA quantitative precipitation forecast is precise only through ~7 days, and days 8–14 are a model blend, not an observed gauge reading.

Water Rights, Irrigation & Land Ownership

Garfield County drains northeast into the Missouri via Big Dry Creek and its forks, with no perennial mainstem river running through the county seat of Jordan.

The Big Dry watershed is an intermittent system; water rights are predominantly stock and domestic rather than irrigation appropriations. Senior rights date to early homestead filings in the 1910s but carry limited volume given the ephemeral nature of flows. The county has no major irrigation districts, and most production water comes from stock dams fed by winter snowmelt and spring rain. Over-allocation is less a concern than total availability — in dry years, flows simply don’t materialize. Secondary sources include shallow alluvial wells along creek bottoms, though depths and yields vary widely across the Breaks terrain. Ranchers on BLM and state lease ground must manage stock water development independently with no district infrastructure.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Garfield County

AUMs (BLM) and head-months (USFS) are both animal-unit-months — one animal grazing for one month, the standard measure of authorized use. Acres are BLM public acres and USFS GIS acres on the mapped allotments.

Statewide maps: BLM allotment map · Forest Service allotment map. Excludes Montana DNRC state-trust grazing leases.

Land Resources

Three independent estimates of how Garfield County’s land is used — shown side by side, never blended

Every acreage figure below comes from an independent source that measures the land a different way. We show them side by side — and never blend reported acreage, satellite pixels and tax classifications into one unexplained number. Total county area 2,992,998 acres · land in farms 2,325,298 acres (78% of the county).

🗺  Open the interactive land map for Garfield County →
See crops, range, irrigated fields, public land and ownership parcels drawn live on the map.

Principal crops — official vs. satellite

These columns measure different things, so they should not match. The Census counts acres actually harvested in the census year, as reported by producers; the Cropland Data Layer counts every acre the satellite saw in that crop, including fields in a crop–fallow rotation and stands not harvested. Winter wheat is the clearest example: much of the county’s wheat ground sits in fallow in any given year, so the satellite total runs well above harvested acres. CDL also over-attributes hay and forage on native range. “Withheld” means the Census suppressed the value to protect an individual operation’s privacy.

How the county’s acres classify

Three ways of counting the same ground. Census figures are producer-reported acres in farms; the satellite column is a wall-to-wall pixel classification of the whole county (so it also sees developed land, water and non-farm ground the others do not); the assessment column is the Montana Department of Revenue’s parcel-level tax classification (CAMA), which is why its cropland total tracks the Census closely while the satellite tends to run higher. Developed and open-water rows come only from the satellite. Where they disagree, no single number is “wrong” — they are measuring different things.

Irrigated land, three independent ways

The single most important acreage figure for a cattle operation, and the three sources genuinely differ. The Census counts acres actually irrigated and harvested in the census year; the Montana DOR figure is what is classified and taxed as irrigated; the DNRC mapping captures the full remote-sensed irrigated extent, including ground that carries irrigation but was idle or in another use that year — so it usually reads highest. We publish all three rather than pick one.

What each estimate means

• USDA Census of Agriculture — producer-reported, the official record. Highly credible, but taken every five years and suppressed in counties where a value would identify a single operation.
• Satellite (Cropland Data Layer) — USDA’s annual, wall-to-wall satellite classification. Complete county coverage every year, but it infers crops from imagery, so it mislabels some ground and over-calls hay and forage on native range.
• Tax / assessment — Montana Department of Revenue parcel-level classification from the CAMA assessment roll (2026 tax year), aggregated from the Montana State Library cadastral. Parcel- and ownership-based; a land classification, not an annual crop report.

Sources: USDA NASS Census of Agriculture 2022 (Quick Stats); USDA Cropland Data Layer 2023 (CropScape zonal statistics, USDA-NASS); Montana Department of Revenue CAMA assessment acreage via the MSDI cadastral parcels layer (tax year 2026); Montana DNRC Statewide Irrigation dataset. Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.

Local Help

Verified contacts and official destinations for Garfield County — not a directory dump, just where to actually call

Extension, USDA, market, brand and diagnostic links go to the official Montana source; the DNRC office and phone are the specific regional office serving this county. Provider directories (veterinarians, feed dealers) will be added only once a repeatable verification standard is in place. Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.

Production & Sales

Operation character, hay base, and how cattle reach market from Garfield County.

Cattle production

Garfield is one of Montana’s most cattle-dense counties by land area, running predominantly cow-calf and yearling stocker operations on vast Breaks range. Most outfits are 200–600 head cow-calf with summer grazing on BLM and state lands in the Missouri Breaks badlands north of Jordan. Calves typically sell at Billings or Miles City in October and November. A significant share of the range is rough, steep Breaks country that limits mechanized haying and pushes operators toward extensive grazing rather than hay production.

Hay & winter feed

Native grass hay and crested wheatgrass dominate the limited irrigated ground, mostly in creek-bottom settings. Most Garfield ranchers depend heavily on purchased hay trucked from Dawson or Yellowstone counties to meet winter needs. Cutting typically runs mid-July to early August. Current year outlook depends on whether July rains materialize after a dry start. [draft — verify against current conditions]

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Miles City Livestock Commission and Billings Livestock Exchange are the primary sale points, both reachable via US-200 east or south. Jordan sits at the intersection of MT-200 and MT-59, roughly 100 miles from Miles City. Trucking distances are long and fuel costs meaningful for operations hauling inputs. Gravel county roads can be impassable in spring mud, limiting early-season movement.

Licensed Processing Plants

No federally inspected or state-inspected processing plant currently operates in Garfield County — the nearest licensed plants are listed below

Meat from federally inspected and state-inspected plants can be sold; custom-exempt plants are not listed here. Verified August 2026 against the USDA FSIS Meat, Poultry & Egg Product Inspection Directory and the Montana Department of Livestock state plant list (Jan 2026). Grants of inspection change — call before you haul.