Big Horn Mountains
F1
The Big Horn Mountains (also Bighorn Mountains ) are a mountain range east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States. The mountain range extends in the northwest -southeast direction in the northern part of the U.S. state of Wyoming and southern Montana. In length have the Big Horn Mountains covers an area of about 120 km with a width of around 50 km. The highest elevation is the Cloud Peak ( 4013 m).
The mountain is almost uninhabited, nearest towns are Buffalo ( Wyoming) and Sheridan. In the Big Horn Mountains is due in the Medicine Wheel, a sacred place of various peoples of the Plains Indians.
Description
Geologic include the Big Horn Mountains to the Rocky Mountains, but by the broad basin of the Bighorn River of them totally isolated. They emerged as the rest of the mountain in the Lara mixing mountain building around 70 million years ago. The digested rocks are all sedimentary rocks, ranging from the late Cambrian to Lower Cretaceous unconformity with the Silurian. At that time the rock was eroded in the meantime again before the resulting exposed earlier layers were covered by younger rocks.
The surface shape is characterized by the glaciation during the ice age. The valleys are generally U-shaped valleys with many cirque lakes. Today, the Cloud Peak Glacier is the only glacier in the Big Horn Mountains. The mountains are far forested mainly in the highlands dominated by conifers, more sheltered and lower sites are mainly passed with the American Aspen Tree.
On the eastern flank of the Big Horn Mountains spring from the Tongue River and Clear Creek, the west flank dehydrated with small streams in the Bighorn River.
The share of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming part of the Bighorn National Forest, a National Forest under the management of the U.S. Forest Service. At the heart of the National Forest Cloud Peak Wilderness is embedded, a Wilderness Area and therefore a protected area of the most severe class of protected natural areas in the United States. The mountains in Montana are part of the Crow Indian Reservation, the Crow Indian Reservation in the Absarokee or Indians. In the north, the mountains are bounded by the canyon of the Bighorn River, which was dammed to form a reservoir and today the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area is a National Recreation Area under the administration of the National Park Service.
Use and infrastructure
Originally the mountains were in the settlement area of 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 north-west of the mountains, is dated to 1400-1700. It also applies to today's Indian cultures of the Great Plains as a Holy place.
As the first white man in the mountains applies Gaultier de Varennes Louis -Joseph, son of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, who explored on behalf of his father from today from Canada in the years 1742-43 Wyoming to find a way to the Pacific Ocean to find. The region was explored in more detail only around 1807 by John Colter, who had participated in the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804-06 and broke up on the way back from the other members to make their own discoveries. From 1897 took advantage of Butch Cassidy and his gang, the Wild Bunch, the Hole in the Wall in the south east of the mountains as a refuge.
The mountain range is largely untapped to date. In the south, crosses U.S. Highway U.S. 16, the mountains and binds to the High Park ski area. In the north of U.S. 14 runs through the Big Horn Mountains and splits into U.S. 14 and U.S. 14 Alt on. All roads through the mountains are shown due to their tourist quality, a National Scenic Byway.
In the Big Horn Mountains, the plot of the film Brokeback Mountain plays, but he was shot in the Canadian province of Alberta.
Names and spelling
In the official USGS Geographic Names Information System of the mountain range is written as Big Horn in two words, the river and most other occurrences are written together as Bighorn.