people come here with stars in their eyes, but....
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9/5/2006
... low wages, high cost of housing, traffic gets worse every year, lots of pollution. environmentally it is not healthy and there is no way it is "pristine" as another person wrote here. 25 years ago it was even more polluted. missoula was originally a mill town. like los angeles, the town is in a valley that has temperature inversions, and the air gets quite unhealthy. it's downstream from the country's largest SuperFund site and there are heavy metals in the water. the culture is a mix: hippies and yahoos, arch conservatives and socialists. local politics can get interesting. growth and how it will be managed is a huge issue here, and the community can never seem to stick to its growth plan. like most places, real estate developers are the ones who really run things. we've been here a long time, and i'm on this site looking for some place else to live. it's great if you are a college student living off a trust fund, but if you live in the real world and have to make a living and want your kids to go to decent schools, give it a pass.
alice | Missoula, MT