Stillwater County in context

Adjacent counties in the the Beartooth foothills corridor. Stillwater County shares the Beartooth Plateau snowpack system with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

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

Stillwater County’s water comes almost entirely from the Stillwater River, which drains the north face of the Beartooth Plateau before crossing Columbus and joining the Yellowstone near Absarokee. The upper Stillwater basin above Nye holds significant snowpack due to elevation, but the Stillwater Mine complex near Nye affects upper tributary quality and has historically required monitoring for any ranchers with senior rights above the confluence.

Basin Index: Stillwater River at Absarokee gauge drives irrigation scheduling for the Columbus-area ranches and is the primary recharge index for the county. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-07-28): Worst class D3 (extreme) over 10% of the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 100%, D1 100%, D2 67%, D3 10%, D4 0%. Station snapshot as of August 02, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.

Two-Week Rainfall

Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Stillwater County · as of 2026-08-02

Observed detail: 2 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.06 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 Stillwater River originates on the Beartooth Plateau near the Wyoming line and flows north through Nye and Absarokee before reaching Columbus, where it enters the Yellowstone River valley. The lower Stillwater near Columbus represents the heaviest concentration of senior irrigation filings.

Water rights on the Stillwater are adjudicated and the river is subject to call in low-flow years, with the most senior territorial-era decrees concentrated on the lower reaches between Absarokee and Columbus. The Stillwater Mine at Nye holds significant process water and tailings impoundment agreements that interact with agricultural water rights in the upper basin — ranchers with rights above the mine should have those rights reviewed in the adjudication record. Rosebud Creek, joining the Stillwater near Absarokee, carries additional irrigation rights from a separate sub-basin and is also fully appropriated. Groundwater is available on the Columbus bench but is not a reliable substitute for surface irrigation in drought years. The county has relatively few large irrigation districts compared to Yellowstone County downstream, meaning most rights are held individually by ranch operators.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Stillwater 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 Stillwater 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 1,149,917 acres · land in farms 568,671 acres (49% of the county).

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

Cattle production

Stillwater County runs primarily cow-calf operations, with the larger outfits using Forest Service allotments on the Custer Gallatin National Forest to the south for summer grazing before fall weaning at Columbus or Absarokee. The county has fewer stocker and backgrounding operations than Yellowstone County to the east given tighter hay base and higher elevation. Several historic family ranches in the Fishtail and Roscoe areas run mother cows year-round on deeded ground supplemented by USFS allotments — these operations typically wean mid-October and haul to Billings or Columbus sales. Palladium mine employment provides off-farm income that keeps some smaller operations viable that would otherwise be economically marginal.

Hay & winter feed

Native grass hay and alfalfa-grass mix off Stillwater River bottoms near Columbus and Absarokee supply most of the county’s winter feed. First-cutting typically runs late June at Absarokee elevation, with only one or two additional cuts possible before September frost at the higher benches. Irrigation infrastructure on the Stillwater is aging on many operations, and a dry spring means some operators run short before a third cut is possible. Ranchers short on hay typically truck from Yellowstone County or the Billings market rather than sourcing locally given the county’s limited surplus.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Columbus on I-90 is the county’s main commercial node, with livestock hauling connecting to Billings Livestock Commission roughly 45 miles east on I-90. No dedicated sale barn operates in Stillwater County itself, making Billings the default marketing point for most operators. US-212 west from Columbus connects to the Beartooth Highway corridor, which is impassable in winter, creating seasonal isolation for Fishtail and Roscoe-area ranches that must route through Red Lodge or Absarokee. Spring mud on county roads off the Stillwater bottoms can delay early-season movement of cattle and equipment by two to three weeks.