The 'Next Aspen': Part III

Big Sky, Montana: It’s a Community. Is it a Town?

By David Frey, 12-31-07

Big Sky, Mont., is an awkward community.

Ski bums, international workers, young professionals, retiring baby boomers and wealthy second-homeowners are strung out across scattered subdivisions below three ski resorts. There’s the canyon, at the bottom; the meadow, halfway up, and the mountain, where Big Sky Resort, Moonlight Basin and members-only Yellowstone Club lie.

It’s a community, but is it a town?

I'm driving across the Rockies looking for the "next Aspen," exploring resort towns caught in an avalanche of change as rich baby boomers change the face of the West. If any place has been tranformed in this New West, it's here.

Blinded by the glare of the bonfire crackling behind the Black Bear bar, it’s easy to believe Big Sky, Mont.’s ski season is in full swing. Lights are still out in most of the condos and plush log cabin getaways, but by 7:30 p.m., this party of ski bums – a fundraiser for a local struggling with medical bills – is already raging. The fire is burning. The beer is flowing. Skiers and snowboarders, one by one, take their position at the top of a snow ramp, careen down to a metal rail and collapse in an explosion of snow.

“We’ve got a pile of dirt covered with snow and a rail! Is this winter or what?” the announcer shouts, and the crowd, well over 100 mostly 20-somethings in parkas and puffy down jackets, shouts in agreement.

Despite worries that the ski bum lifestyle is a dying culture, it is enjoying a healthy last gasp at Big Sky, Mont. Before the tourists arrive, this place feels like a college campus; the party is the first night back at school. Seasonal workers, self-described “dirtbags,” hug friends they haven’t seen since last winter’s snows melted outside their condos, the resort equivalent of dorm rooms, and swap stories about their summers.

It’s a community, but is it a town? That’s the question residents are struggling with. Big Sky’s 2,200 residents are investigating whether or not it makes sense to officially incorporate and become Montana’s newest town. The chamber formed a committee to investigate the idea, and possibly put a ballot issue in front of voters as early as spring.

“This is a destination ski resort and people have come to it and made it into a community and now we want to make it into a town,” says Jean Palmer, a 31-year Big Sky resident. Make that “Queen Jean,” a title she has carried since being named Dirtbag Queen at the 1999 Dirtbag Ball locals’ fest.

Palmer favors incorporating, even though it could shove her out of a job. She’s the station manager of the area’s contract Post Office, a position that puts her at the hub of the community, but one that would likely go to a federal employee if Big Sky became a town.

David Frey's off-season journey through some of the Rockies’ premier ski resort towns took him in search of the "next Aspen," whatever that might mean. "Aspenization" is seen as either a blessing or a curse in ski towns and in this five-part series, David sets out to find out which is which in Western towns that, along with their neighbors, have undergone some of the most dramatic recent changes in the West. As David points out in Part I of the series, these communities also serve as bellwethers as more and more towns become caught up in an economy based less on traditional resources than on lifestyle. It’s not even about skiing anymore. It is about people seeking out a corner of the West that calls to them. Click below to catch up with the other parts of the series... Part I: Park City, Utah: 'Where Have All the Ski Bums Gone?' Part II: Ketchum, Idaho: A Five-Star Dilemma Part III: Big Sky, Mont.: It's a Community. Is it a Town? Part IV: Jackson Hole, Wyo.: ‘Every Town Has its Song’ Part V: Aspen Colo.: Devil or Guardian Angel?

“There’s this kind of elusive sense that this is what Big Sky ought to do,” says Marne Hayes, executive director of the Big Sky Chamber of Commerce. “Do you want to be a resort pieced together, or do you want to be a community?”

Big Sky Resort was launched by former NBC anchor Chet Huntley in 1973. The community formed later, as powder lured visitors who became locals.

“Big Sky is sort of in this adolescence stage,” Hayes says.

In the absence of a government, there is the chamber, which makes Hayes as close as Big Sky gets to having a mayor. The chamber has taken it upon itself to tackle two of the area’s toughest issues. One is the question of incorporation. The other is affordable housing. Many of Big Sky’s workers make an hour-long trek along dangerous winding roads from Bozeman to work behind the counters and on the construction sites. That is, until they decide they could just get jobs in Bozeman.

The community stretches for miles from the resorts to the Highway 191 below. It straddles Gallatin and Madison counties. Most of the houses are in Gallatin County. The ski resorts are in Madison County. Decisions affecting the area are made by far-flung county commissioners. Sheriffs provide law enforcement. Special districts cover the basic necessities.

Driving into Big Sky, I feel like Gertrude Stein felt about Oakland, Calif. There seems to be no there there. With the ski lifts closed, it’s not even clear where “there” is. I drove from the highway to Moonlight Basin desperately searching for exactly where Big Sky – the town – was. I’m not alone, Hayes tells me.

The answer, it turns out, is everywhere I look. Big Sky is a galaxy of subdivision constellations. The school, K-8, is in one. The fire station is in another. The post office is in another. Coffee shops, restaurants and real estate agents are scattered throughout.

“It isn’t any more artificial than any other town in America,” Madeline Mussman tells me. At 27, Mussman says this may be her last year as a ski bum. A waitress turned massage therapist, Mussman has an affection for Big Sky and the dirtbag lifestyle that’s infectious. She pays $650 a month for a 400-square-foot condo, surrounded by others who do the same. Many double up. Mussman has her condo to herself, her mountain bike upended on the kitchen cabinet, her snowboards stacked in the corner. Ski area maps decorate the walls.

“A big thing we say is, we live the dream,” Mussman says, as she cuts a quick pace up the winding road to catch twilight over the Spanish Peaks and get in shape for the season. “We’re the luckiest people we know. I can tell you six people who told me that in the last week. ‘I’m the luckiest person I know.’ And I just don’t know too many young professionals elsewhere who can say that.”

Rising housing prices are tearing at the fabric of the community, though, threatening to leave it a place reserved for the wealthy on the one hand and service workers on the other, many of them stashed in beat-up condos and budget lodges converted to worker housing.

“You risk becoming sort of a shell of a community,” Hayes says.

	A memorial on the dangerous road to Big Sky.

In the absence of affordable housing, buses shuttle workers from as far as Bozeman and Belgrade, 45 miles away, and traffic backs up on gnarly Highway 131 and the Spur Road, where dozens of white crosses mark traffic fatalities over the years. The Forest Service has had to crack down on 14-day camping rules to keep workers from living out of tents.

Like other destinations, these resorts have increasingly turned to international visa workers. For some, it’s a job. For others, it’s a party. For a few, the appeal of Big Sky is too hard to leave.

“To me, it’s just the vibe,” says Leon Carstens, 37, a Cape Town, South Africa resident who like many, came for the winters and fell in love with the summers. Except, Carstens doesn’t ski or snowboard. But he loves the party atmospheres of the winters, and the wildlife and natural beauty here on the fringe of Yellowstone National Park.

But what is the young professional to do when even a studio costs $200,000? A single-family home could cost three times that. In some cases, real estate prices have more than doubled in a year. Gallatin County is the fastest-growing in Montana.

The area’s appeal isn’t a mystery to Queen Jean, who like a quarter of the area’s business owners came on vacation and never left. “It’s just unbelievable,” Palmer says. “Every single day being able to work in the valley here. The winter sunsets are just unbelievable. The summer sunsets are great. It’s been a lifelong pleasure.”

She’d like to see more affordable housing, even though many residents resist it. Incorporation might make it easier, she says. But the idea comes with plenty of obstacles. First, there’s the county line that runs down in the middle. The town would have to stay on the Gallatin side, kissing goodbye to resort tax dollars. There’s the question of what would happen to a resort tax that currently funds community niceties. Some developers oppose incorporation, happy not to have to jump through a set of town regulations. And there’s a question of density. There are plenty of people for a town, they’re just scattered. Town limits would have to be gerrymandered to meet state laws requiring 200 residents per square mile to form a town.

For supporters, though, the time has come. Developers can plan a resort with blueprints, watercolor sketches and slick brochures. Community happens accidentally, spontaneously. In a place like Big Sky, it happens when residents look around and decide this place isn’t just a nice place to ski and hike. It’s home.

“Everyday I wake up, it’s paradise,” Palmer says. “But I don’t want anybody else to figure it out.”

This is the third installment of a five-part series on NewWest.Net in which David Frey travels across the West to explore the idea and the whereabouts of the "next Aspen," in every sense of the phrase. Up next: Jackson Hole, Wyo.: ‘Every Town Has its Song.’

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