Canyon Creek, MT
Canyon Creek wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Canyon Creek lands at the 84th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 68 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Canyon Creek at the 81st percentile, close to its 84th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
94.1% of Canyon Creek's 68 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 64 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 5.9% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
Where Canyon Creek ranks
Inside Montana, Canyon Creek sits at just the 61st percentile even though it scores 84th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Canyon Creek ranks 5,110 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,358 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 187 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Canyon Creek and the insurance market
Canyon Creek's 84th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Canyon Creek's 94.1% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Canyon Creek's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 68 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Canyon Creek. The exposure-zones guide covers what Canyon Creek's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.