🏔️ Chinese Wall (Montana)

The Chinese Wall is a large cuesta that lies along the crest of the Lewis and Clark Range in Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in northwestern Montana, USA. It stretches from Junction Mountain northward for 15 miles (24 km). It has an eastward-facing escarpment, 700 to 1,300 ft high, carved by Pleistocene glaciers from westward-tilted, sparsely fossiliferous, Middle Cambrian limestones. At the base of this sheer wall, the limestones overlie Middle Cambrian shales and sandstones resting unconformably on late Precambrian sedimentary strata of the Belt Supergroup. The highest points on the wall are named separately as mountain peaks, including Junction, Haystack, Cliff, and Salt mountains. The Chinese Wall makes up part of the Continental Divide: water on the different sides of the wall flow into either the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean.