The Deer Lodge plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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73° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 70° in 1990.
Deer Lodge’s center stands about 4,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,470 ft to 5,040 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Powell, about 10,130 ft, 12 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (gravel, sand, silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sedimentary. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Black-shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Deer Lodge reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Cottonwood Creek, the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 1,170 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pend Oreille, Lake Umatilla and Noxon Rapids Reservoir.
460 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Deer Lodge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Deer Lodge has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Deer Lodge normally reaches 41° and falls to 17°. The record high is 68°, in 2025; the record low −18°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.20 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Deer Lodge Area threaded record (Deer Lodge 3 W, 3 miles west, 310 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
