Highwood, Montana.
Typical home $366,216 (+3.7% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,250 (+186%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $12,908 +4%
- $353,309$366,216 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $107,001 +41%
- $259,215$366,216 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Highwood$1,922
- Montana$2,453
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 10 years.
Typical home values in Highwood, MT rose 3.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Highwood, Chouteau County, Montana
Highwood, in Chouteau County, had 165 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Chouteau County was 2.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Chouteau County work in farming, then schools and health care.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Highwood is a very small community in Chouteau County, Montana, where neighbors are likely to know one another and the surrounding country is open farmland. Homes here are valued well above what the county's incomes might suggest, and fewer residents live in poverty than one might expect for a rural place. Winters are cold, with December the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest; the year brings little rain and melted snow, so the climate is on the dry side.
Work. Residents work mostly in farming, forestry and mining, in schools, hospitals and social care, in government, and in shops. Across Chouteau County, some of the largest workplaces are IND Hemp, Fort Benton Elem Schools and Big Sandy Medical Center. Unemployment in the county is low and close to where it stood a year earlier, though the county has lost a small share of its jobs over the past year.
Things to do. Most outings from Highwood mean a longer drive. Great Falls is a waterfall, and the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art is a museum, both a longer drive away. The Teton River is another river to visit, also a longer drive away.
Report a mistake
- 7%below the poverty line
What people in Chouteau County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Chouteau County had 1,230 jobs in 2025, 0.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 36° and lows near 18°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 55°. About 15 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Highwood Northeast weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Chouteau County
- IND HempDecorticating flax56
- Fort Benton Elem SchoolsSchool district45FTE
- Big Sandy Medical CenterCritical access hospital41FTE
- Big Sandy ActivitiesRehabilitation job counseling and training, vocational38
- Big Sandy K-12 SchoolsSchool district36FTE
- BmrmcCritical access hospital25FTE
- Highwood K-12 SchoolsSchool district24FTE
- CHSFarm supplies merchant wholesalers20
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 3 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 114 people in all across the county; Highwood has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Cold wavesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- LightningVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- WildfireRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Highwood’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very high. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Chouteau County.
Highwood home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Highwood$366,216
- Montana$467,275
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Highwood address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Highwood — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.