Bighorn National Forest is a vast protected mountain landscape in northern Wyoming covering more than 1.1 million acres along the Bighorn Mountains. Rising from foothill grasslands to 13,189-foot Cloud Peak, it is largely high-country terrain of conifer forest, alpine meadows, lakes, and snow-fed streams. First federally protected on 22 February 1897 as the Big Horn National Forest and renamed in 1908, it is among the oldest government-protected forest lands in the United States. The forest includes the 189,000-acre Cloud Peak Wilderness, extensive trails, scenic byways, abundant wildlife, and recreation areas such as Meadowlark Lake, making it both an important watershed and a major public landscape.