THE CARTER COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Sagebrush Steppe setting.
Carter County has 3,340.5 square miles of land in Montana. 6 mapped landscape regions meet across Carter County: Sagebrush Steppe, Montana Central Grasslands, Forested Buttes, among others.
Rolling semiarid plains are punctuated by buttes, badlands and river breaks. Much of the regional terrain developed on sandstone, siltstone and shale without the leveling influence of continental glaciers.
Regional context: Northwestern Great Plains ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Carter County intersects 6 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Sagebrush Steppe58.2%
- Montana Central Grasslands31.2%
- Forested Buttes5.8%
- Pine Scoria Hills2%
- Semiarid Pierre Shale Plains1.6%
Finding your parcel within Carter County
The atlas lists 2 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Carter County, including Ekalaka, Alzada. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Carter County by land and water
The Census records 7.53 square miles of water within Carter County, or 0.2% of its total area. That share is close to Carter County’s 0.2%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Carter County has 3,246.3 times the land area of nearby Ekalaka town (1.03 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Custer County, Fallon County, Powder River County within Montana. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

