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 Missoula, Montana Posted by:  T0SHEA
N 46° 52.459 W 113° 59.679
12T E 271803 N 5195552
Though not the first settlement in the Missoula Valley, the City of Missoula has certainly grown to become the largest.
Waymark Code: WMTMM0
Location: Montana, United States
Date Posted: 12/12/2016
Views: 3
The first settlement in the Missoula Valley was at a place named Hell Gate, a few miles east. It was named Hell Gate by French trappers who witnessed the remains of many natives there, victims of intertribal wars. A settlement was begun at Hell Gate in about 1860, 54 years after the first whites, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, passed through what is now Missoula on their return trip in 1806. The first settlement in Missoula came about in 1864, with the construction of a store at a location then called Missoula Mills. This was at what is now the north end of the Higgins Avenue bridge on the north bank of the Clark Fork River.
Slowly at first the town grew, with the first school opening in 1869 and the first newspaper, the Missoula and Cedar Creek Pioneer starting publication in 1870. In 1973 the first Higgins Avenue bridge was constructed and the first hospital, St. Patrick Hospital, opened. In 1877 Fort Missoula, on the northwest corner of the city, was established. The volunteer fire department was established the same year.
1883 was an especially important year for Missoula as it was chartered as the Town of Missoula and the Northern Pacific railroad arrived that same year. The town's growth accelerated apace with a city hall being erected in 1887. Electricity arrived in Missoula the same year that Montana became a state, 1889, and in 1895 the University of Montana opened. It remains the flagship campus of the University, with an enrollment of over 12,000 students.
Today Montana’s second-largest city, behind Billings, the Missoula metropolitan area has a population of around 115,000. For much of its history a forestry and supply town, with the diminution of the lumber industry Missoula's largest employers are the U of M, schools and its two hospitals.
Much of old Missoula remains intact, with a large number of National Historic Places in the city, probably the most notable being the Missoula County Courthouse, built in 1908-1910. Missoula has also managed to retain its railway stations, the Great Northern Station, at the north end of Higgins Avenue, and the Milwaukee Line Depot, at the southern end of the Higgins Avenue bridge. Both are entered in the National Register.
The entry from the American Series book Montana, A State Guide Book follows.
MISSOULA (3,223 alt., 14,657 pop.), stands on the level bed of a pre-
historic lake, at the mouth of Hell Gate Canyon. The Sapphire Mountains extend southward ; the Bitterroots, with Lolo Peak prominent among them, loom on the southwestern horizon. From the high country to the north, icy Rattlesnake Creek rushes down to empty into Clark Fork of the Columbia (locally called the Missoula River} near the city's eastern limits... ...Clark Fork, which cuts the city in two, is shallow but swift, its current split by a series of islands. Three bridges unite the north and south parts of Missoula: the old-fashioned iron-and-plank Van Buren Street bridge near the east end of town, the Higgins Avenue bridge at the center, and the modern concrete Parkway bridge near the west end.
The city itself is neat and attractive, and gives an impression of compactness in its business district and in such residential areas as the one west of the university. South of the river the residential section merges imperceptibly with the environs of the university, where the homes of many faculty members are interspersed with fraternity and sorority houses that are distinguished from other residences only by occasional groups of loitering students. Student life in these houses, while not marked by restraint, has closer ties with the faculty than is generally the case in such institutions. The city has a tendency to straggle away with little apparent plan. One section extends far northeastward between Rattlesnake Creek and Mount Jumbo, and ends as a huddle of summer cabins in a grove of pines. Another, somewhat grimy and smoke-stained, is crowded between the Northern Pacific Railway and the base of Waterworks Hill. On its
wide western edge where it meets no natural barrier, the city advances on the river flat seemingly at random.
In general, Missoula is characterized by broad avenues lined with maple and cutleaf birch, handsome residences, well-kept lawns, and gardens of great variety and richness. Because of its comparatively low altitude and its situation on the Pacific slope of the Continental Divide, Missoula has for Montana a mild climate and generous rainfall. Cherry and apple trees, fragrant with blossoms or rosy with fruit according to season, adorn nearly every good-sized yard in the residential sections... Continued
From Montana, A State Guide Book, Page 172
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Courthouse |
Wilma Theatre |
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Northern Pacific Depot |
Milwaukee Depot |
Book: Montana
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 172
Year Originally Published: 1939
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