Good for single rugged individualists, but not fam
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6/6/2016
Kalispell is an unhappy town in a beautiful setting. Its residents tend to behave like the deer: you see them everywhere, but they are skittish. You constantly ask yourself how people can be so unhappy in such a beautiful, wide-open place far from the maddening crowd? I moved here with my family 1+ year ago and only just met my neighbor because he lost something on my property.
We learned in the past year are that Kalispell has major social issues from multi-generational poverty and substance abuse. There are a lot of drug addicts and alcoholics and children of them. You get the feeling, from meeting the older natives, that it was a much nicer town a few decades ago but even they will admit that people here do keep to themselves.
Kalispell is small enough that your children will be exposed to the sort of poverty and social issues that in bigger cities you might have been economically segregated from. While this may be more "real" it can be extremely unpleasant and traumatic for your children to participate in it. I'm talking homeless children, children in group homes, kids who have sex at age 10, etc. We were advised the only way to get around the good kids and parents was to put our kids into sports. The few private schools here are packed. That being said, the teachers seem to really care and the class sizes are small, but there are few open house type events and we really have no sense what our child is learning.
One of the positives about Kalispell is the "live and let live" mentality where they tolerate and do not intrude on other people's business. For individualists this is very freeing, and it seems to extend even to children who can dress pretty much how they want and other kids do not bother them. But the dark side is they just seem to turn away and not face the problems head on. I think this mentality is why they are very defensive about the problems here.
Kalispell is not conservative in the sense that Idaho or Texas is conservative. I would describe it as rugged libertarian with a naive veneer of liberalism. They haven't had their jobs taken by illegal aliens here so they assume anything negative against immigrants is "racist". Kalispell is one of the few cities left in America where the "jobs Americans won't do" are all done by Americans. Fast food, landscaping, construction--all Americans.
A local teacher told us that seasonal affective disorder plays a major role in shaping people here, and I agree. The winters are brutal--not from cold or snow--but from the endless gray. Kalispell averages 151 sunny days a year, whereas Seattle averages 152! Seattle has tanning booths on every corner just for people to survive SAD but in Kalispell the tanning booth equivalent are the tiny casino bars on every corner.
Keep in mind too that Montana is 4th in the nation for alcohol consumption and 3rd for suicide. I cannot speak for the rest of Montana, but on my last flight to Kalispell, the flight attendant who had 15-years of experience, told me the friendliest people she has met during her career were from Montana, EXCEPT for those from Kalispell. She told me that, and I agree with her. Another resident told us she commutes to Kalispell from nearby Big Fork because people are much friendlier there.
I know I have painted a bleak picture, but it cost me a lot of money and time to discover this, and I wanted to share it with families who imagine Kalispell to be Mayberry because they are taken by the scenery and quaint downtown. Yes you can get a big house on a huge lot against a river. Yes deer roam through it and bald eagles fly overhead, but when your children are crying bored lamenting they can't find one friend to come over to play, and your neighbors won't even look at you, it doesn't amount to much.
If I were a single person not looking for love, but a devoted lover of nature, Kalispell would be great. People do not mess with you. There is not an artificial, wealth-generated manufactured culture. You can have a loaded gun in your car when you get stopped for speeding and the cops won't blink an eye. Nature is everywhere in big, often scary, proportions. There aren't laws and regulations strangling you from every angle, and aside from housing it is cheap to live here with no sales tax.
When we leave, I will surely miss the scenery, the "breathing room" that so much open space gives me. I also realize that Kalispell does have something most American towns do not. It is that sense of being more of an individual, of having more personal space and freedom to be who you are. I am sure over a decade or so, that would all seep into my bones, and perhaps balance out my need to for more human interaction and friendly banter. But our kids deserve a better educational and social environment than this, so we're off to find Mayberry 2.0.
Jason | Kalispell, MT