The Horseshoe Hills are a roughly crescent-shaped range of
hills north of
Manhattan, Montana in
Gallatin County, Montana
Gallatin County is located in the U.S. state of Montana. With its county seat in Bozeman, it is the second-most populous county in Montana, with a population of 118,960 in the 2020 Census.
The county's prominent geographical features are the ...
. They lie at
in the area between the southern
Big Belt Mountains and the northern
Bridger Range
The Bridger Range, also known as the Bridger Mountains, is a subrange of the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Montana in the United States. The range runs mostly in a north–south direction between Bozeman and Maudlow. It is separated from the ...
. The hills are bounded on the north by Sixteen Mile Creek (which begins in the Crazy Mountains), the first major tributary of the
Missouri River. As they are in the rain shadow of the Boulder, Elkhorn, and Bull Mountains to the west, the Horseshoe Hills are notably dry, receiving of precipitation annually. This is especially true on the southern and southeastern flanks, which are also in the rain shadow of the hills themselves. In the driest areas,
Missouri foxtail cacti
''Escobaria missouriensis'', the Missouri foxtail cactus and formerly ''Coryphantha missouriensis'', is a species of low-growing North American cacti. It is found in along the Missouri River in the tallgrass prairie and shortgrass Great Plains ...
, plains
prickly pear cacti
''Opuntia'', commonly called prickly pear or pear cactus, is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae. Prickly pears are also known as ''tuna'' (fruit), ''sabra'', ''nopal'' (paddle, plural ''nopales'') from the Nahuatl word f ...
, and
yucca abound, as well as
prairie rattlesnakes. Much of the hills are private property, but there is also some state,
BLM
BLM most commonly refers to:
* Black Lives Matter, an international anti-racism movement and organization
* Bureau of Land Management, a U.S. federal government agency
BLM may also refer to:
Organizations
* BLM (law firm), United Kingdom and ...
, and
National Forest land.
See also
*
List of mountain ranges in Montana
Notes
{{Authority control
Mountain ranges of Montana
Landforms of Gallatin County, Montana