I want to move to nw montana next year and would like any info i can find on the area, such as: weather, jobs, available rentals,etc

-- tresa lee lamb (tresalamb@hotmail.com), June 16, 2001

Answers

Response to moving to montana

HELLO, MY NAME IS JERRY TRAVIS. I LIVE IN LOUISIANA, BUT HAVE A CABIN JUST OUT OF HELENA, MONTANA. IN FACT, IN SEVEN DAYS I AM GOING UP TO THE CABIN FOR ABOUT TWO WEEKS. LONG TRIP! I AM GOING TO INCLOSE SEVERAL SITES THAT YOU CAN LOOKUP ON THE WEB FOR INFORMATION. YOU CAN ALSO DO A SEARCH ON THE WEB BY TYPING IN "MONTANA" OR ANYTHING RELATED TO MONTANA IN THE "SEARCH BLOCK". THE SITES ARE: www.helenair.com www.montana.com www.discoveringmontana.com THIS NEXT SITE IS A NEWSPAPER SITE WHERE YOU CAN READ NEWSPAPERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD ON LINE. IT SHOULD BE OF GREAT HELP. www.newspapers.com THE DISCOVERING MONTANA WEB SITE IS THE STATE SITE AND IF YOU LOOK UNDER "STATE AGENCIES" YOU WILL SEE A LINK TO "JOBS". ALL I CAN SAY ABOUT MONTANA IS THAT IS IS GOD'S COUNTRY!!!!!!!!

-- JERRY TRAVIS (travis938@excite.com), June 17, 2001.

Response to moving to montana

This is frivolous answer but the "Sons of the San Joaquin" have a beautiful song about Montana on one of their albums. Can't remember which one. I think you will love it there. Spent a lot of time out and around Missoula. Just beautiful!!! Good Luck. :-)

-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), June 17, 2001.

I lived in Yellowstone county. Summers are short, gets up to 100 but only 5-10% humidity most of the time. Things get dry early in the summer. Violent lightning and hail at times. Winters were harsh at times but not unbearable if you're prepared. Snowfall doesn't get extreme unless you're in high elevations. Some days never got above 0. Can get awfully windy. Wind chills -50 at times. Job market is pretty bad compared to most of the US. Unless you're a rancher, you're limited. Especially in more remote areas. Best to bring an income with you if you can. The internet is great for that but you may not find a local isp. 2 way satellite is coming out soon though. Some decent paying jobs at the mines, refineries, utilities, state jobs but of course there's lots of demand for those. Rest of the jobs are mostly underpaid compared the the US average. You'd save money on rent, utilities were cheap, but some things cost the same no matter where you go. It's a big state but there's only 900k people in it and not much interstate. Roads get snowpacked and drifted in the winter but everyone seems to get around ok. Some people living 50 miles from the closest paved roads and much farther from stores, banks, even gas stations. Many travel a few 100 miles into Billings or another big town for supplies. Very good supply of rentals in town and excellent prices compared to most of the US. Finding a rural rental might be tough. Land prices vary from cheap to insane. Alot of the prime land has been bid up sky high from people coming into the state from places like California. You can still find decent land if you look hard enough. Finding water can be tough in some areas. Many use cisterns but then you're dependent on keeping it filled. Use google.com to search Montana, you'll find millions of websites.

-- nobody (nothing@nowhere.no), June 17, 2001.

I lived in Missoula for nine years. Beautiful community. High unemployment makes it so everybody earns peanuts. The weird thing was that housing was almost as high as the big city!

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), June 17, 2001.

Missoula is where many show up so yes rentals are a bit higher. It's the hyped up part of Montana. I myself prefer the Red Lodge/ Columbus area. Rentals in Billings, Helena, etc and in most small towns are extremely attractive, half the price of what they'd go for in some parts of the US. For a short time, I rented a 2 bedroom apt with w/d hookup and a garage in a nearly near complex with pool, playground, etc for $525 a month. A similar setup here in Southern California would be over $1000/month, not kidding. In fact, in some areas here, people are paying $1600 a month for small 1bd apts with no storage. Here's the link to the Billings newspaper online, it's the largest paper in Montana, covers a big area. http://www.billingsgazette.com/

-- nobody (nothing@nowhere.no), June 17, 2001.

tresa, Look for jobs on the web at the Montana State Job Service. NW is totally different than the Eastern side around Billings. NW Montana is a low wage area, lots of movie stars, big money people building multimillione dollar estates around the Glacier Park area on down around Flathead Lake on down into the Bitteroot. If your looking for cheap land-average per acre price as of last week-an acre can be $10,000 on up. If you go for mountain top/side hill land (logged over) you might get it for 3-4 thou. if you buy 20 or more acres. Closer to the Idaho border, fewer jobs and lots of retirees with money to spend. It is very beautiful, but short summers and longish winters (the wind blows here too). Most people who really garden end up with a greenhouse setup of some kind. Had a snow storm last year in June. This year drought. Rentals aren't hard to find, most are no pets, first and last plus deposit. Getting harder to find rural rentals with acreage. I'm not trying to be negative-but the push right now is to make the NW area a play ground for the rich and famous. I think the best thing for you to do is visit the town, talk to employers and people and see if you like it! There are so many variables. Good luck!

-- K Cox (kilatable@hotmail.com), June 17, 2001.

yep, lots of people moved to Montana to escape urban sprawl, etc. Many came from California where they were used to paying insane real estate prices. The irony of it all is once they got to Montana, they bitched about the lack of services, unpaved roads, etc. They drove land prices up out of the reach of average people. They infiltrated local governments and started screwing everything up. I saw similar travesties happen back east. City folk would move out to the country and then complain about the smell from farms. They actually managed to get some pig farm operations shut down. These things are going to be happening more and more as the population grows.

-- nobody (nobody@nowhere.no), June 18, 2001.