The Contrast of Eastern and Western Montana

I saw the two sides of Montana last week, one still green and lush, bustling with commerce and traffic, the other already dry, the landscape turning to khaki, with sparse traffic and few people.

The influx of folks moving to Montana is hardly noticeable where I live in Malta, a small town with a declining population. But what Malta has to offer isn’t what newcomers to the state are looking for. There are no trout streams up here, and no snow-capped peaks.

The muddy, slow-moving Milk River skirts the edge of town, and the nearest mountains -- the Little Rockies – sit on the horizon 40 miles away. The closest Wal-Mart is an hour-and-a-half drive to the west. An hour to the east is Glasgow, dubbed “The Middle of Nowhere” by the Washington Post.

Livingston, however, where Barb and I spent a few days recently, is situated along the banks of the Yellowstone River, surrounded by soaring mountain peaks. There’s a Wal-Mart just over the hill in Bozeman, along with every other big box store and fast food franchise anyone could want.

But it ain’t all gravy.

Soaring home prices have made it difficult for nearly all but wealthy newcomers to buy real estate there. What used to be a blue-collar railroad town has become a haven for hipsters from somewhere else.

There’s plenty of work – the local McDonald’s offers up to $21 an hour to start -- but even the best-paying construction jobs don’t provide enough income to buy a place there.

Driving home from Livingston we watched the country change from green to yellow the further north we went. A few miles beyond Hilger, there was little green left, only in the wet spots and there aren’t many of those.

We saw fewer out-of-state license plates the closer we got to Malta, a place where out-of-county plates even draw attention. Traffic was light except for a string of combines driven by a Hutterite harvest crew headed south.

I suppose it’s only a matter of time before even Malta gets discovered. There’s bound to be a certain number of newcomers to Montana who don’t like the hustle and bustle of a Livingston and begin to look elsewhere in the state for their nirvana.

After listening to a Livingston business owner complain about all the newcomers in town and the high price of real estate, I mentioned I was from Malta.

“That’s a long way from anywhere,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” I told him. “That’s the point.”

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected].