Roosevelt County in context

Adjacent counties in the the Missouri River Hi-Line corridor. Roosevelt County shares the Fort Peck reservoir and Missouri system with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

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

Roosevelt County’s primary water supply flows through it — the Missouri River carries upstream Rocky Mountain snowmelt regulated through Fort Peck Reservoir in Valley County, providing a more reliable base flow than purely local precipitation. Tributary systems including the Poplar River enter from the north with unregulated prairie flows. The county benefits from Fort Peck’s carryover storage in dry cycles, though river-bottom irrigation allocations are still subject to senior priority administration.

Basin Index: Missouri River flows at Wolf Point reflect Fort Peck Reservoir releases upstream; local tributary inputs from the Poplar and Big Muddy are precipitation-driven and highly variable. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-11-10): Worst class D1 (moderate) over 1% of the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 26%, D1 1%, D2 0%, D3 0%, D4 0%. Station snapshot as of November 13, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.

Two-Week Rainfall

Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Roosevelt County · as of 2026-11-13

Observed detail: 2 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.19 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.

Moisture Outlook: 1, 3, 6 and 12 Months

Expected precipitation against the 1991–2020 normal · Roosevelt County · NOAA seasonal outlook issued Oct 15, 2026; monthly outlook Oct 31, 2026 · refreshed monthly

• Odds, November 2026: 31% chance of a drier-than-normal month, 34% near normal, 35% wetter.
• Odds, Nov 2026–Jan 2027: 36% drier than normal, 34% near normal, 30% wetter.
• Temperature: November 2026 leans warmer than normal (65% chance of a warmer-than-normal month); Nov 2026–Jan 2027 leans warmer than normal (45% chance of a warmer-than-normal three months). Warmer weather pulls more moisture out of soil and snowpack.
• Spring growing season (Apr–Jun 2027): these three months normally bring 6.29 in, about 45% of the year’s moisture. NOAA’s early read: 36% drier, 34% near normal, 30% wetter — expected 6.15 in (98% of normal).

How it is built: NOAA Climate Prediction Center outlook odds read across Roosevelt County, applied to the county’s 1991–2020 precipitation record (NOAA NCEI). Inches are county-wide averages that include mountain ground, so valley and bench ranches usually receive less; the percent of normal carries over better than the inches. Full method and limits → Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.

Water Rights, Irrigation & Land Ownership

The Missouri River bisects Roosevelt County east-west, with Wolf Point and Culbertson as the main river-corridor towns. The Poplar River enters from the north near Poplar, and Big Muddy Creek joins near Culbertson, both adding unregulated prairie tributary flows to the main stem.

Missouri River water rights in Roosevelt County are among the older and more senior in the state, with irrigation filings dating to the early 1900s along the river bottoms. Fort Peck Reservoir storage upstream in Valley County provides buffered releases that moderate low-flow years for downstream junior rights holders. The Fort Peck Indian Reservation covers the northern half of Roosevelt County, and tribal water rights under the federal reserved rights doctrine hold senior priority over state-based appropriations on multiple reaches. Over-allocation is a real concern on smaller tributaries in dry years. River-bottom irrigated meadows typically produce two cuttings of alfalfa or alfalfa-grass mix; upland range is dryland only. Rural water districts serve most stock-water needs away from the river corridor.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Roosevelt 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 Roosevelt 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 1,506,945 acres · land in farms 1,218,335 acres (81% of the county).

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

Cattle production

Roosevelt County supports a layered production structure: river-bottom operations running irrigated hay and cow-calf pairs, upland dryland ranches on the breaks north and south of the Missouri, and Fort Peck tribal operations on the reservation. Commercial Angus and Angus-cross dominate off-reservation; tribal ranches run a mix of breeds including some retained Hereford-influence genetics. Operation size ranges widely from 100-cow family units to larger tribal herd enterprises. Some stocker and yearling programs exist on the better grass range in the breaks country.

Hay & winter feed

Irrigated alfalfa and alfalfa-grass hay from the Missouri River bottoms is the county’s premium forage product, typically supporting two cuttings with first cutting in mid-June and second in early August. Upland operators rely on dryland native hay and crested wheatgrass meadows, which produce one cut in July weather permitting. River-bottom hay quality is consistently higher and serves as a trade commodity trucked to neighboring dryland counties in short years.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Wolf Point on US-2 is the county seat and commercial center, with the Hi-Line railroad corridor and US-2 providing east-west movement. Wolf Point Livestock is the primary local sale barn. Culbertson handles some sales east toward the North Dakota border. Trucking to Billings is approximately 5 hours via US-2 west to Glasgow then south; Glendive is 2.5 hours southeast on Highway 16 and US-2. Spring breakup and gumbo roads on county two-tracks can isolate some operations for 2–4 weeks.

Licensed Processing Plants

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