Pryor Mountains
| Pryor Mountains | |
|---|---|
| Baahpuuo Isawaxaawuua ("Hitting Rock Mountains") | |
Pryor Mountains
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| Highest point | |
| Peak | East Pryor Mountain |
| Elevation | 8,776 ft (2,675 m) |
| Coordinates | 45°10′06″N 108°20′07″W / 45.16833°N 108.33528°WCoordinates: 45°10′06″N 108°20′07″W / 45.16833°N 108.33528°W |
| Geography | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Montana |
The Pryor Mountains are a mountain range in Carbon and Big Horn counties of Montana. They are located on the Crow Indian Reservation and the Custer National Forest, and portions of them are on private land. They lie south of Billings, Montana, and north of Lovell, Wyoming.
The mountains are named for Sergeant Nathaniel Hale Pryor, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition who vainly pursued horses stolen from the expedition in the area. The Crow Nation, a Native American tribe which lived nearby, called the mountains Baahpuuo Isawaxaawuua ("Hitting Rock Mountains") because of the abundance of flint there (which was chipped into arrowheads).
According to Crow Nation folklore, Little People (a race of 18-inch (46 cm) high dwarf-like people with spiritual powers) lived in these mountains.
The Pryor Mountains are a 145,000-square-mile (380,000 km2) region of Montana and Wyoming. The Pryor Mountains consists of Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks the most prominent unit is limestone (known as the Madison Group limestone) laid down about 300 million years ago. The limestone and older sediments rest on Archean metamorphic rock consisting of gneiss and schists. The gneiss is exposed along the northeast escarpment of East Pryor Mountain. During the Laramide orogeny in the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene Period (about 70 to 60 million years ago), the limestone was faulted and uplifted. The 705 to 740 feet (215 to 226 m) thick limestone blocks were tilted and uplifted as large blocks with the northeastern corner of the blocks forming the Bighorn and the Pryor Mountains.
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