any members in Montana

@immatthewj My neighbor is from Missoula, She'd be interested (more like I'd be interested) in all this Montana analysis. As a geographer, it's fascinating to me. It's the only part of the country I have not been to, but I sure would love to visit. 

I'd agree with the above statistics. Missoula is a college town with lots of outside influence but  beautiful place to live (like lots of smaller towns once were). 

Work as I recall was very competitive because it was a place where people wanted to live for the recreation. I had an Oxford professor that was there because he loved to fly fish. 

While there in the 1990's I was told that "the Californian's were invading the place", driving up property prices, etc. From what I understand this also happened during covid too. California always has been a population center with many moving to Seattle too. Population and money mecca's produce freedom to move and explore.

Sadly I do remember my mom pointing to a book about rape in Missoula, and the average being much higher, and it went on to say the justice system in the town was broken. Society is so complex and changing so quickly, I even here town's like Burlington Vermont are now considered unsafe. Hard to say how bad these places are without some personal imprint of the place- growing up just outside of NYC in the 70-80's, I saw lots of crime too. NY got much better in the late 90's that's for certain.

From an audiophile perspective I would bet Montana has slightly more watts per audiophile than other places. Big Sky big power, but I could be wrong. 

@bjesien I always found Burlington, VT overrated. There are a lot of college towns that are though.

Also. I always wondered why rural America, while so scenic with breathtaking nature is so depressing, abandoned and hopeless, etc. Nothing like central and Western Europe where tourism thrives in these areas.

Thanks for the clarification.  We are planning a trip to Bozeman and was curious about the statement.  I don’t know Montana at all, but Bozeman  looks interesting.   

@immatthewj My neighbor is from Missoula, She’d be interested (more like I’d be interested) in all this Montana analysis. As a geographer, it’s fascinating to me. It’s the only part of the country I have not been to, but I sure would love to visit.

@grislybutter , well, I escaped Montana shortly before my 19th birthday in 1978 and I haven’t really been back for any extended periods of time, so my own analysis may not be completely on point. I do remember that a while after I got out of the Air Force I was back for maybe 6 months (December ’84 through June ’85) and once I was in a barber shop for a hair cut and there was a rancher/farmer bitching to another one about the laws protecting endangered species (I believe he was discussing grizzly bears at the time, and I am not typing that just because this is your thread). Anyway I remember him saying something about how he and his kids had never seen a dinosaur, but it didn’t bother him that they (dinosaurs) were extinct. But it is a beautiful and relatively sparsely populated state. If I remember from our Montana History class in HS, Montana is a Spanish word for mountainous, which seems to me to be a bit misleading as a large percentage of the state is what I consider to be plains/prairie.

While there in the 1990’s I was told that "the Californian’s were invading the place", driving up property prices, etc.

@bjesien , my Dad used to grouch and grump about that. My Mom was from Kalispell (my Dad was from Billings) and I have fond memories of our trips up across the Mountains in the summer (my Dad was a teacher, so he was off) to spend time with Grandma. Anyway, as time passed and both my Mom and my Grandmother had died and I’d take a vacation or two each year to visit my Dad, I’d always say to him that if he moved to Kalispell (which at one time when my Mom was alive they had thought about) I’d find a way to visit more often. I always said that in a half jokingly but half serious way. But he’s always reply that "The Californians had ruined Kalispell." He didn’t like making big life changing decisions (I am like him in that regrad, although I can list a couple I should not have made) so even if "the Californians had not ruined Kalispell", I doubt he would have ever packed up and moved anyway.

Thanks for the clarification. We are planning a trip to Bozeman and was curious about the statement. I don’t know Montana at all, but Bozeman looks interesting.

@grannyring , Bozeman is Southeast of Missoula on I-90 (which is a fun drive if you like driving, as I used to) and a bit Northwest of Billings. I am reciting that without the benefit of a map, so if the map in my head (I’ve made that drive a few times) is off, I apologize. I’ve only passed through, never spent any time there, but it looks to me like beautiful country. "The foothills" is how my Dad described it. He (my Dad) had a teacher buddy who retired a while after he did he did, and my Dad’s teacher buddy was a huge outdoors man (fishing and hunting) and Bozeman (actually a "cabin" in the vicinity) was where he retired to. That was back in ’15, about the time my Dad died. Anyway, Bozeman is another college town, MSU, and I kind of get the impression that it may be a bit more progressive/liberal than most of the rest of mainstream Montana, but I do not know that for sure. I do not remember it having the same reputation as Missoula. If you have ever watched that series Yellowstone (which I will not watch anymore and absolutely cannot stand), every once in a while, when they are tossing names about to try to add "realism" to that farce, they would refer to Bozeman.