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Malta can't be found on top ten list

Rare is the town that fails to make a list of the top ten places to do whatever: retire, ski, fish, buy an over-priced condo.

As hard as I look, however, I can’t find Malta included anywhere. It even missed a recent list of the best places to retire in Montana that included Jordan.

Really.

Jordan with a population of 400, a dusty little prairie burg sitting on the banks of Dog Creek, was considered a better place to retire than Malta.

I suppose that’s a good thing. We’ve got enough old people up here already, myself included.

Among the other towns on the list with Jordan were two on the opposite end of the spectrum: Bozeman and Whitefish, as trendy and expensive as Jordan is drab and cheap. A one-bedroom, one-bath home in Jordan, built in 1920, lists for a mere $70,000.

In Bozeman that same $70,000 will barely cover a week’s stay at the Motel 6.

Cost of living is seldom considered. Bozeman and Whitefish are on every best-places-to-retire list, despite having the highest home prices in the state. They do, however, have a lot more to offer: congestion, crime, high taxes, and tapas bars to name a few.

Malta doesn’t have any of that.

We do have excessive heat and cold, abundant mosquitoes, and swarms of bats that feed on them.

When the wind blows and picks up clouds of alkali on the nearby Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge, you’d swear a wildfire is approaching.

The refuge used to offer the best public land pheasant hunting in the state, but no more. It’s not even on the top 20 list of best places to pheasant hunt in Montana.

In fact all hunting has gotten so bad up here that I’d suggest trying somewhere else, the Flathead or the Gallatin, perhaps. Check the list of best places.

Malta doesn’t have much to offer beyond reasonably priced real estate, good schools, a small hospital and, a 6 o’clock siren.

The nearest Wal-Mart is more than an hour away, the closest four-lane highway twice that.

There’s a non-profit group raising bison in the southern part of the county and it’s only a matter of time before the wooly behemoths and the trendy hipsters that adore them stampede through town.

Billings has a better job market. Livingston is far more scenic. Bozeman has better skiing. Even Jordan, it appears has more to offer than Malta.

Really.

Check it out.

It’s on the list.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]

 

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