The Big Horn Basin resembles a huge, walled fortress, nd has always been an area set apart from the rest of Wyoming by natural barriers. Surrounded by high mountain ranges on three sides and rough foothills in Montana to the north, the Basin resembles an enormous bowl with a center roughly 70 to 90 miles in size.

Unlike the eastern slope of the Big Horn Mountains, the western slope was relatively free from Indian skirmishes. For many years, the Basin was bypassed on overland routes tot he north or south, and by the time white men began pushing into the valley, the Golden Age of the West was nearly over.

It is a prime cattle producing area which saw one o the last great range wars between cattlemen and sheepherders in the early part of the 20th Century.