Cat Creek, Montana
| Cat Creek | |
|---|---|
| Unincorporated community | |
 Cat Creek
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| Coordinates: 47°3′55″N 108°0′22″W / 47.06528°N 108.00611°WCoordinates: 47°3′55″N 108°0′22″W / 47.06528°N 108.00611°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Montana |
| County | Petroleum |
| Elevation | 2,907 ft (886 m) |
| Time zone | Mountain (MST) (UTC-7) |
| • Summer (DST) | MDT (UTC-6) |
| ZIP codes | 59087 |
| Area code(s) | 406 |
| GNIS feature ID | 805516 |
Cat Creek (also Frantz or Frantzville) is an unincorporated community in eastern Petroleum County, Montana, United States.
The Cat Creek community (also known as the Shay community) is located in Cat Creek Basin, in a "fertile valley land", 6 miles (9.7 km) long and 4 miles (6.4 km) wide, consisting of 16,000 acres. It lies along local roads east of the town of Winnett, the county seat of Petroleum County.
Cat Creek Basin has a diversified topography, ranging from plains to badlands. The altitude of the area ranges from 4,100 feet (1,200 m) at the top of gravel benches in the southwestern part of the area to 2,200 feet (670 m) feet at the mouth of Musselshell River, with an average elevation of 2,907 feet (886 m). In areas adjoining Musselshell and Missouri Rivers, the surface is rugged, consisting of sandstone outcrop formations while the surrounding area varies from smooth, level, grass-covered gravel benches to the rough, uneven, sagebrush-covered plains, broken by numerous gullies, valleys and streams. The topography features hogbacks of sandstone escarpments and small dome-shaped buttes of igneous rocks.
The climate of Cat Creek is semi-arid, with a small annual rainfall, averaging 12 inches (300 mm). Although major rivers are present, secondary streams only in the nearby Big Snowy Mountains contain running water throughout most of the year. Extremes of temperature throughout the year range over 120 °F.
The vegetation of the Cat Creek area is diverse with the plains areas featuring a sparse growth of buffalo grass, black sage and greasewood while on the northern bluffs, bull pine grow. Blue joint grass, bull pine, Douglas fir and scrub cedar are found along the banks of larger streams in both shale and sandstone soil while cottonwood and willow grow on the bottom land of the rivers and larger creeks.
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