Lincoln County in context

Adjacent counties in the the Kootenai River and Cabinet Mountains country. Lincoln County shares the Cabinet Mountains and Purcell Range snowpack with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

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

Lincoln County snowpack is near or above median at higher elevations; lower stations well below at the last spring reading (June 4, 2026). Snowpack has since melted out for the season, so this section shows how the 2026 snow season ended, not current conditions. Five SNOTEL stations monitor county snowpack. Lincoln County watershed snowpack moderately below normal (county avg 80% of median); highest at Stahl Peak (99%), lowest at Garver Creek (62%).

Basin Index: Lincoln County watershed snowpack moderately below normal (county avg 80% of median); highest at Stahl Peak (99%), lowest at Garver Creek (62%). Drought Monitor (valid 2026-09-08): Worst class D2 (severe) over 0.8% of the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 96%, D1 63%, D2 0.8%, 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) · Lincoln County · as of 2026-09-17

Observed detail: 4 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.51 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

The Kootenai River enters Montana from British Columbia in the northwest corner of Lincoln County, picks up the Fisher River near Libby, and exits into Idaho near Troy. Lake Koocanusa behind Libby Dam provides over 6 million acre-feet of storage capacity, fundamentally reshaping the hydrology that pre-dam irrigators were appropriated against.

The Kootenai basin supports relatively limited irrigated acreage given the county’s timber-dominated land base; most water rights are small, direct-flow appropriations on lower-elevation bottomlands along the Kootenai, Fisher, and Tobacco Rivers. Pre-dam water rights holders face a complex regulatory environment because Libby Dam operations alter natural flow timing, and the Army Corps manages releases for power generation and flood control rather than agricultural benefit. The Tobacco River drainage in the northern part of the county near Eureka carries its own adjudication history and supplies hay meadows that are among the most productive in the county. Over-allocation is not a systemic issue on most Lincoln County tributaries given ample precipitation, but localized conflicts occur on smaller streams during late-summer low-flow periods. Secondary agricultural water sources include direct precipitation (Lincoln County averages 18 to 28 inches annually depending on elevation) and stock ponds fed by natural runoff. Ranchers with bottomland along the Fisher River near Libby hold some of the most reliable and senior rights in the county.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Lincoln 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 Lincoln 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 2,312,038 acres · land in farms 50,005 acres (2% of the county).

🗺  Open the interactive land map for Lincoln 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 Lincoln 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 Lincoln County.

Cattle production

Lincoln County ranching is dominated by small cow-calf operations, most running 50 to 150 head on a mix of owned bottomland hay ground and USFS grazing permits in the Kootenai National Forest. The heavily timbered terrain limits open range and concentrates livestock on valley floors along the Kootenai, Fisher, and Tobacco drainages. Some operators supplement income with timber sale revenue from private timberland, making ranch viability a two-commodity equation. Bull sales and replacement heifer consignments typically go to Kalispell or Missoula rather than a local market, adding trucking cost that squeezes margins on smaller operations.

Hay & winter feed

Irrigated grass hay on bottomland meadows is the backbone of Lincoln County’s winter feed supply, with first cut around late June to early July given the county’s later spring compared to lower-elevation Montana valleys. Tobacco Valley hay ground near Eureka is notably productive and occasionally generates surplus hay that moves east to Flathead County buyers. Typical winter feeding periods run 160 to 200 days given persistent valley-floor snow. Timber-shadowed fields can delay spring green-up and reduce grazing days even when conditions appear adequate by date on the calendar.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Libby and Eureka are the two commercial centers, both served by US-2 as the primary east-west corridor. There is no resident sale barn in Lincoln County; cattle move east to Kalispell (90 miles on US-2) or south to Missoula (150 miles via US-2 and US-93). Marias Pass on US-2 east of Glacier can close or restrict oversize loads in winter and early spring, complicating spring cattle movement. Canadian border crossings at Roosville (north of Eureka) provide an option for buying replacement cattle from Alberta but add import documentation requirements.

Licensed Processing Plants

No federally inspected or state-inspected processing plant currently operates in Lincoln 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.