Montana
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Montana, constituent state of the United States of America. Only three states—Alaska, Texas, and California—have an area larger than Montana’s, and only two states—Alaska and Wyoming—have a lower population density. Montana borders the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan to the north and the U.S. states of North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and Idaho to the west. Although its name is derived from the Spanish montaña (“mountain” or “mountainous region”), Montana has an average elevation of only 3,400 feet (1,040 metres), the lowest among the Mountain states. The Rocky Mountains sweep down from British Columbia, trending northwest-southeast into western Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. The eastern portion of the state, however, is a gently rolling landscape, with millions of grazing cattle and sheep, and with only scattered evidence of human habitation. It forms a part of the northern Great Plains, shared with Alberta, Saskatchewan, North and South Dakota, and northeastern Wyoming. Helena is the capital.
The residents of Montana are relatively far from markets for their products, as well as from the country’s manufacturing and supply centres. The state is strongly oriented toward the outdoors and toward activities such as summer and winter sports, hunting, and fishing. Long-distance trips are frequent occasions for socializing and entertainment or cures for prairie- or mountain-born restlessness.
- Capital:
- Helena
- Population1:
- (2020) 1,084,225; (2023 est.) 1,132,812
- Governor:
- Greg Gianforte (Republican)
- Date Of Admission:
- November 8, 1889
- U.S. Senators:
- Steve Daines (Republican)
- Jon Tester (Democrat)
- State Nickname:
- Treasure State
- Big Sky Country
- State Motto:
- "Oro y Plata (Gold and Silver)"
- State Bird:
- western meadowlark
- State Flower:
- bitterroot
- State Song:
- “Montana”
- Seats In U.S. House Of Representatives:
- 1 (of 435)
- Time Zone:
- Mountain (GMT − 7 hours)
- Total Area (Sq Km):
- 380,832
In spite of its northern location, Montana is very much a Western state. The main street of Helena is Last Chance Gulch, the city’s original name and a reminder of the prospectors who invaded the surrounding hills in the 1860s to pan for gold. By 1889, when Montana became the 41st state of the union, the cattle drive was an institution, and the state had begun to emerge as one of the country’s leading copper-mining centres. Montana is called the Treasure State because of its immense mineral wealth. Area 147,040 square miles (380,832 square km). Population (2020) 1,084,225; (2023 est.) 1,132,812.
Land
The western two-fifths of Montana falls within the Rocky Mountains, and the eastern three-fifths lies upon the Great Plains. Rocky Mountain Montana is a land of high mountains, deep valleys, green forests, and treeless crest lines, whereas Great Plains Montana is a vast horizontal sweep of yellow rangeland, golden grain fields, and brown fallow strips. This contrast between mountain and plain is among the most powerful geographic features of the state.
Relief
In Rocky Mountain Montana the mountain ranges are aligned generally from north-northwest to south-southeast. They are made up of ancient hard rocks that were compressed, folded, faulted, and otherwise contorted by the mountain-building forces that created the Rockies, beginning about 100 million years ago.
During the last ice age, some 11,500 years ago, glaciers carved the mountain crest lines and high valleys from rounded, convex terrain into sharp, rugged, concave topography and, when they melted, left the loose earth material that they had gouged out of the mountains as glacial deposits in the valley bottoms. The glaciers in Montana today are very small compared with the great tongues of ice of the past. The bottoms of the valleys between the mountain ranges consist mainly of alluvial floodplains and terraces; of benchlands and foothills carved on young, soft rocks; and of plains, terraces, and foothills made up of glacial deposits.
There is a contrast within Rocky Mountain Montana between mountains with narrow valleys and those with broad valleys. In the narrow-valley regions, which are the most rugged and spectacular of the state, the valley floors are humid and forested. There are two narrow-valley regions. One is northwestern Montana, which includes Glacier National Park with most of Montana’s glaciers. The other lies in south-central Montana at the northern end of Yellowstone National Park; this area contains the highest point in Montana, Granite Peak, which has an elevation of 12,799 feet (3,901 metres). These two narrow-valley regions are separated by a broad-valley area in west-central and southwestern Montana. There the valley bottoms are wide, dry, and grassy, permitting sweeping panoramic views of the mountain ranges.
Most of Great Plains Montana is rather rough land. The country south of the Yellowstone River is mainly scattered hills. Surrounding a long segment of the Missouri River in the north-central part of the state are the Missouri River Breaks, which make up a scenic area of rugged uplands that is part of Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. Genuine plains are found in the “Golden Triangle” north of Great Falls and plateaus elsewhere. Some of the hills, breaks, and valley bluffs form rugged badlands such as those seen at Makoshika State Park, near Glendive. The valleys of the major rivers flowing from the Rocky Mountains across eastern Montana are deeply incised. Scattered upon the plains and plateau surfaces are eight small mountain masses called Rocky Mountain outliers, which are like islands of the Rockies set out upon the plains.
The rocks underlying Great Plains Montana, except for the mountain outliers, are young, soft, and more or less horizontal. Roughly north of the Missouri River the plains rocks are covered by glacial deposits left by the continental ice cap, which occupied the area at the same time that alpine glaciers were sculpting the mountains to the west. The bottoms of the incised valleys are made up of alluvial floodplains, terraces, and soft-rock benchlands.
Drainage
Montana is the only state in the union from which waters flow to Hudson Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean. The northwestern section of the state lies west of the Continental Divide and is drained to the Columbia River—and thus ultimately to the Pacific—by the Kootenai River and by the Clark Fork and its major tributary, the Flathead River. The Flathead flows into and then out of Flathead Lake, the largest natural lake in the state. The Kootenai flows out of Montana at the lowest elevation in the state, 1,820 feet (555 metres) above sea level. East of the Continental Divide, Montana is drained by the Missouri River and its principal tributary, the Yellowstone. Rising in southwest Montana, where it is formed by the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers, the Missouri is a tributary of the Mississippi River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico and thus is part of the Atlantic Ocean drainage system. A small portion of Montana on the eastern slope of Glacier National Park drains ultimately to Hudson Bay.