Bighorn Mountains
| Bighorn Mountains | |
|---|---|
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 The Bighorn Mountains between Buffalo and Meadowlark Lake |
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| Highest peak | Cloud Peak ( 4013 m ) |
| location | Wyoming , Montana , USA |
| part of | Rocky mountains |
| Coordinates | 44 ° 23 ′ N , 107 ° 10 ′ W |
The Bighorn Mountains (also Big Horn Mountains ) are a mountain range east of the Rocky Mountains in the USA . The mountain range runs in a northwest-southeast direction in the north of the US state Wyoming and in the south of Montana . In length, the Bighorn Mountains have an extension of about 120 km with a width of around 50 km. The highest point is Cloud Peak (4013 m).
The mountains are almost uninhabited, the nearest towns are Buffalo and Sheridan . In the Bighorn Mountains, among other things, is the Medicine Wheel , a sacred place of various peoples of the Plains Indians .
description
Geologically, the Bighorn Mountains belong to the Rocky Mountains, but are completely isolated from them by the wide basin of the Bighorn River . Like the rest of the mountains, they were formed in the Laramian orogeny around 70 million years ago. The exposed rocks are all sedimentary rocks and range from the late Cambrian to the Lower Cretaceous with a discordance in the Silurian . The rock of that time has been eroded again in the meantime before the earlier layers exposed by it were covered by younger rock.
The surface shape is shaped by glaciation during the Ice Age . The valleys are mostly trough valleys with many cirque lakes . Today, Cloud Peak Glacier is the only glacier in the Bighorn Mountains. The mountains are predominantly forested, in the higher areas coniferous trees dominate, more sheltered and lower locations are predominantly made up of the American trembling aspen .
The Tongue River and Clear Creek rise on the eastern flank of the Bighorn Mountains , the western flank drains into the Bighorn River with small streams.
The portion of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming belongs to the Bighorn National Forest , a national forest under the administration of the US Forest Service . In the center of the national forest is the Cloud Peak Wilderness , a wilderness area and thus a protected area of the strictest class of nature reserves in the United States. The mountains in Montana are part of the Crow Reservation , the Indian reservation of the Absarokee or Crow Indians. In the north, the mountains are bounded by the canyon of the Bighorn River, which was dammed into a reservoir and is now the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area , a National Recreation Area under the administration of the National Park Service .
Use and infrastructure
Originally, the mountains were located in the settlement area of the Absarokee and the Eastern Shoshone Indians. The Arapaho and Cheyenne used the mountains occasionally. The Big Horn Medicine Wheel , a National Historic Landmark in the northwestern mountains, is dated between 1400 and 1700. It is also considered a sacred place for today's Indian cultures of the Great Plains.
The first white man in the mountains is Louis-Joseph Gaultier de Varennes, son of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye , who, on behalf of his father, explored Wyoming from what is now Canada in the years 1742–43 to find a way to the Pacific Ocean to find. The region was only explored more closely around 1807 by John Colter , who had participated in the Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804-06 and separated from the other members on the way back to make his own discoveries. From 1897, Butch Cassidy and his gang, the Wild Bunch , used the Hole in the Wall in the southeast of the mountains as a shelter.
The mountains are largely undeveloped to this day. In the south, US Highway US 16 crosses the mountains and connects to the High Park ski area. In the north, US 14 runs through the Bighorn Mountains and splits into US 14 and US 14 Alt. All roads through the mountains are designated as National Scenic Byway due to their tourist quality .
Brokeback Mountain is set in the Bighorn Mountains, but most of it was shot in the Canadian province of Alberta .
