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Nowhere Coola Than Missoula (RegisteredTrademark)

By: S. Rinella, B. Lane

This article was written by Steven Rinella, and Brent Lane, who wrote the title.

Missoula, Montana, is the kind of town that compels its residents to try to sum it up in a poetic sentence or two. “The Paris of West-Central Montana” and “Montana’s enlightened cow town” are a couple that come to mind. Perhaps the reason for this citywide sloganeering is that no one really knows what to make of this mountain town besides that it is undoubtedly the intellectual and artistic capital of Montana. Missoula’s population of 57,000 presents the visitor and resident alike with a collection of aesthetic and cultural contradictions that go way above and beyond what you’d expect from a town of this size. Loggers and ranchers lean against the bar in many of the town’s pubs and saloons alongside die-hard environmentalists from the locally based Alliance for the Wild Rockies. Resident poets spend Sunday mornings mingling at cappuccino stands with Harley riding lawyer bikers who decided to spend a day or two in Missoula as they make their way from San Francisco to the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.

The University of Montana is to thank for much of Missoula’s diversity. Programs including law, business, forestry, and a variety Master of Fine Arts degrees bring in a real mix of folks that just find it easier to discuss differences over a beer than to go through the trouble of segregating themselves. There’s also a large population of old hippies with no real tie to one another besides the fact that Missoula looked like a good place to hang out. Missoula is also home to a close-knit community of Hmong immigrants who moved to Montana from mountainous regions in Southeast Asia during the turmoil of the Vietnam War. Many Hmong families support themselves by producing organically grown vegetables that they sell at the Missoula Farmers Market on Saturday mornings throughout the Summer. The market is held downtown and brings hundreds of people together as they mingle around and stock up on locally grown fruit and vegetables, wild mushrooms and huckleberries, and assortments of flowers.

Much of Missoula’s appeal comes from its superb locality. For one thing, Missoula is at the junction of two of Montana’s thoroughfares, I-90 and highway 93, so its easy to get in and out of on weekend getaways. But, more importantly, it sits at the junction of five valleys, including those of the Bitterroot and Clark Fork Rivers, and it lies smack in the middle of a tangled network of mountain ranges that run mostly north and south, forming the spine of the Rocky Mountain Ecosystem. In that wilderness you can hunt everything from elk and grouse to bighorn sheep and mountain goats. Many people take to those same hills for skiing and snowboarding, and many more still go out in search of fish. There are plenty of species, but most of the common names end with the word “trout.” There’s the non-natives, like brown, rainbow, and brook trout. And there are the native fish, including cutthroat, mountain whitefish, and the nearly vanished bull trout.

What makes Missoula different from many of the other towns in the northern Rockies offering outdoor opportunities is that it’s better known for great indoor opportunities. There’s a fantastic collection of art museums and theatres. Missoula is home to Mo-Trans, a modern dance company, and also the Missoula Children’s Theatre, which tours to schools around the country and puts on a variety of shows for the home crowd. Musicians ranging from Wilco to Lyle Lovett to the Violent Femmes make appearances in Missoula’s clubs. And the wanderer with a demanding palette need not feel left out in Missoula. You can get your pork loin with a mango chutney that is just right, not to peppery and not too sweet. The local favorite on nights with a tight budget is the Dinosaur Café, a closet-sized kitchen in the back of Charlie B’s bar that serves up some awesome traditional Cajun dishes for under five bucks. Or you can walk around a little and find some vegetarian Indian, Greek lamb dishes, fish tacos, and haut cuisine served in an art-deco atmosphere.

Despite Missoula’s happening downtown, it isn’t immune to the troubling economic situation that has pestered Montana for decades now. Jobs in retail and service fields in Missoula have tripled since 1980, while the wood and paper industries have shrunk by more than half. “The Mountain Tax” – small wages in exchange for big scenery – is collected in heavy tolls in much of the Northern Rockies. The median annual household income is $22,502 in Missoula. Two hospitals, the university, and the northern headquarters of the U.S. Forest Service provide some of the good jobs in Missoula. There is also a building technology movement that is promoted and fueled by the Missoula Area Technology Roundtable.

Missoula is able to pull off its slow economy as part of a fashion statement. Pawn shops displaying arcane pieces of outdoor equipment and various oddities of Americana have more of a presence in the downtown area than the banks, and the bars and restaurants maintain an anything goes policy on dress. Ragged Levis and scuffed up boots blend right in, making shabby dress a great equalizer of the classes. The rich that are in Missoula dress down to blend in with the ski bums and trout bums.

Just like the scenery/economics tradeoff, the climate is hit and miss as Missoula rolls through its yearly weather schedule. The summer days are warm and sunny, sometimes very warm, but you can count on the evenings cooling right off. At the peak of Summer it’s light outside until well past 10 p.m. You can catch a 7 p.m. movie and still have enough daylight left to fish the downtown stretch of the Clark Fork River.

Then comes the Winter. One writer summed it up best when he said Missoula needs less February and more barbecue. Snow isn’t a big issue in Missoula, as it falls and then usually melts within a day or two. Instead of snow clouds, a wet gray sky hangs over Missoula like a soggy bath towel from January through the Spring of the year. This can be especially frustrating because outside the valley, in Seeley Lake, for instance, the skies will be sharp and clear, with cold dry air and perpetual snow cover that squeaks under your boots.

Missoula’s other problem is the poorly checked and rampant residential growth that has spread shabbily out from the city’s center, threatening the ambience of this once isolated bohemian outpost. Thousands of years ago Missoula was a giant lake called Glacial Lake Missoula, and now it’s filling back up with the lights from new homes that go ever higher up the valley walls. However, no one is volunteering to leave in order to alleviate the problem. Many of those who do try to leave find that they can’t stay away for long. One longtime resident of Missoula claims to have moved away four times and each time he came back within a couple of years. Right now he’s away again, living in New Jersey, but he says there’s no reason to think he won’t be back soon.

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