Powder River County in context

Adjacent counties in the Montana’s most remote rangeland triangle. Powder River County shares the Wyoming Bighorn Mountain headwaters of the Powder River with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

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

Powder River County relies almost entirely on the Powder River itself — fed by Wyoming headwaters in the Bighorn Mountains — as its primary surface water source, with most rangeland water coming from stock reservoirs and a sparse network of ephemeral creeks. There are no SNOTEL stations within the county, and snowpack relevance comes indirectly from Wyoming’s Campbell and Johnson County high country.

Basin Index: Powder River flows north from Wyoming through Broadus toward the Yellowstone confluence in Custer County; low-gradient, high-sediment river with unreliable late-summer flows in drought years. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-09-08): Worst class D3 (extreme) over 84% of the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 100%, D1 100%, D2 97%, D3 84%, 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) · Powder River County · as of 2026-09-17

Observed detail: 0 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.00 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 Powder River runs north through Broadus and is the county’s only named perennial stream of consequence, entering Montana from Wyoming near Moorhead and flowing to the Yellowstone at Terry in Prairie County. Most water filings in Powder River County are stock water rights on reservoirs rather than direct surface diversions.

Powder River County has one of Montana’s least-developed irrigation water right portfolios — the river’s high sediment load, flashy hydrology, and alkaline water quality make it unsuitable for most crop irrigation. The majority of water filings are small stock water reservoir rights, many filed in the 1910s–1930s homestead era and carrying volumes of just a few acre-feet. There is essentially no irrigated hay ground in the county, making purchased hay from the Yellowstone Valley or Bighorn Basin a near-universal budget requirement. The Powder River compact with Wyoming is less developed than the Tongue compact, but Wyoming upstream usage remains a long-term concern for Montana flows. Little Powder River enters from Carter County to the southeast and provides minor additional drainage. Coal-bed methane produced water from Wyoming-side development has created water quality monitoring concerns on the lower Powder in drought years.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Powder River 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 Powder River 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 2,110,846 acres · land in farms 1,854,916 acres (88% of the county).

🗺  Open the interactive land map for Powder River 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 Powder River 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 Powder River County.

Cattle production

Powder River County runs one of the lowest cattle densities in Montana on some of the largest individual operations in the state — average ranch sizes frequently exceed 20,000 deeded acres with comparable BLM and state lease ground. The operation profile is almost exclusively cow-calf, with calves weaned in October and hauled north to Miles City or west to Billings. There are no feedlots and minimal stocker infrastructure. USFS and BLM allotments cover a large share of the county’s grazing acres, with the Custer National Forest’s Ashland District managing the northern fringes. Remoteness and distance to markets are the defining operational constraints.

Hay & winter feed

There is effectively no locally produced irrigated hay in Powder River County; winter feed is purchased from Yellowstone Valley suppliers near Billings or Glendive and hauled in on US-212 or US-12. Native grass pasture stockpiling is the primary low-cost wintering strategy. Operators with river-bottom deeded ground near Broadus cut modest amounts of native hay from subirrigated meadows, typically yielding 0.5–1.0 ton per acre in average years. Feed budgeting begins in August based on fall hay price quotes from Yellowstone Valley brokers.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Broadus sits at the intersection of US-212 and MT-59 but is 90 miles from the nearest sale barn at Miles City. Most cattle haul north on US-212 to Miles City Livestock Commission, a 1.5-hour trip on a good road that becomes treacherous in winter blizzards. Some operators haul west to Billings on US-212 through Crow Agency — a 3-hour run. Fuel and parts availability in Broadus is adequate for routine needs; major equipment repair requires Miles City or Billings. Spring calving in remote locations can mean 60–90-minute response times for veterinary calls from Miles City-based large animal vets.

Licensed Processing Plants

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