Welcome to Sweet Grass County

Published: 2022
By Marc King

Sweet Grass County is located in south-central Montana. Sweet Grass County became a county in 1895, formed from parts of Park, Meagher, and Yellowstone Counties. The county is 1,855 square miles of various topography. The current population is 3,824. Ranching and mining are the primary economic drivers. Sweet Grass County was known for its raw wool in the early part of the 1900s and was the largest inland shipping point in the United States for raw wool. Today, platinum and palladium are mined in the Absaroka Beartooth Mountain range south of Big Timber. The mine is home to one of the purest forms of these valuable minerals and employs many residents in Sweet Grass County. The Crazy Mountains also reside in Sweet Grass County. There are several theories on how this range was named. The Native Americans called them the Mad Mountains for their rugged beauty and haunting winds that blow down the canyons. Geology plays a part in another theory. The lava upthrusts are young in the perspective of geological time and do not fit in with neighboring rock formations, hence the name “crazy,” or because of being wholly disconnected from any other range and being a sort of “crazy” formation.