Treasure County in context

Adjacent counties in the the mid-Yellowstone reach. Treasure County shares the upper Yellowstone pass-through system with these neighbors.

Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.

Snowpack & Moisture Detail

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

Treasure County has no significant local snowpack — it sits entirely on the Yellowstone River plain at roughly 2,700 feet elevation, dependent on flows originating hundreds of miles upstream in Park and Carbon counties. The county’s narrow Yellowstone River corridor supports limited irrigation, while the vast majority of the land base is dry-land range relying on precipitation and stock dams.

Basin Index: Yellowstone River at Hysham gauge reflects pass-through flow from the upper basin — no local contribution; stock dam levels on benchlands are the operational drought indicator. Drought Monitor (valid 2026-11-10): No drought (D1+) in the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 11%, D1 0%, 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) · Treasure County · as of 2026-11-13

Observed detail: 2 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 0.37 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 · Treasure County · NOAA seasonal outlook issued Oct 15, 2026; monthly outlook Oct 31, 2026 · refreshed monthly

• Odds, November 2026: 33% chance of a drier-than-normal month, 34% near normal, 33% wetter.
• Odds, Nov 2026–Jan 2027: 36% drier than normal, 34% near normal, 30% wetter.
• Temperature: November 2026 leans warmer than normal (55% chance of a warmer-than-normal month); Nov 2026–Jan 2027 slight lean warmer than normal (42% 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 6.82 in, about 45% of the year’s moisture. NOAA’s early read: 42% drier, 33% near normal, 25% wetter — expected 6.42 in (94% of normal).

How it is built: NOAA Climate Prediction Center outlook odds read across Treasure 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 Yellowstone River traverses Treasure County from west to east along its southern edge, with Hysham sitting on the north bank roughly midway through the county. This stretch of river is the only surface water resource in the county, as no significant tributaries enter the Yellowstone within Treasure County boundaries.

Treasure County holds the fewest and most junior Yellowstone River water rights of any county along the mainstem, given its late settlement history and small agricultural base. The river is fully appropriated under the Montana adjudication, and Treasure County’s filings are almost entirely post-1900, placing them behind the long queue of senior rights in Yellowstone and Park counties upstream. Irrigation is limited to a narrow corridor along the river bottom near Hysham, with total irrigated acres among the lowest of any Yellowstone River county. Dry-land bench operations east and north of Hysham rely exclusively on stock dams fed by ephemeral draws and direct precipitation — there is no well-developed groundwater aquifer providing reliable supplemental supply. In a multi-year drought, operators in the benchlands routinely haul water or move cattle off early rather than wait for stock dams to recover.

Federal Grazing Leases

BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Treasure 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 Treasure 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 625,792 acres · land in farms 499,471 acres (80% of the county).

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

Cattle production

Treasure County supports a small number of large, dry-land cow-calf operations on big deeded and state lease parcels across the benchlands north and south of the Yellowstone. Operation scale is driven by necessity — carrying capacity on dry-land range in this part of Montana requires large acreage per animal unit, and the economics favor fewer, larger outfits over many small ones. There are no feedlots and no significant stocker background operations in the county. Most producers wean in October, sort, and truck directly to Billings or to order buyers working the I-94 corridor rather than utilizing any local market infrastructure.

Hay & winter feed

Treasure County produces very little hay relative to its cattle inventory — river-bottom irrigated ground near Hysham yields limited tonnage of alfalfa-grass mix, but most operators source the majority of their winter feed from the Billings market or direct from Yellowstone County neighbors. Hay costs here are structurally higher than in the western counties because every ton must be trucked in. First-cutting on local river-bottom ground runs mid-to-late June. Operators who can background a few extra tons of hay in August and September routinely do so, because a hard winter or early snow can make Billings-to-Hysham trucking expensive and uncertain.

Logistics · sale barns & trucking

Hysham sits on I-94 and US-312, with Billings roughly 100 miles west on I-94 — a straightforward haul but a long one. No sale barn operates in Treasure County or within reasonable distance until Billings. Order buyers working I-94 sometimes load cattle at Hysham-area ranches directly, saving producers a haul. The Forsyth auction in Rosebud County to the east is an alternative destination roughly 50 miles on I-94. Spring road conditions on county roads north of the Yellowstone can delay turnout and calving checks by two to three weeks in a wet year.

Licensed Processing Plants

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