Eight of top Ten towns in New West Territory
Outdoor Life “Best Places” Rankings Chock Full of Western Towns
By Courtney Lowery, 3-24-08
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Not that it’s a surprise, but Outdoor Life’s list of the 200 “Best Places to Live!” in the latest issue is dominated by communities in the New West.
In the top 10 alone, eight communities are in the Rockies:
2. Lewiston, Idaho
3. Sheridan, Wyoming
4. Cody, Wyoming
5. Pocatello, Idaho
6. Lewistown, Montana
8. Dillon, Montana
From there, there are 29 others in the top 200 of “Paradise Found” and most of those are ranked in the top 50. (Richfield, Cedar City and Logan, Utah; Livingston, Helena and Butte, Montana; Fort Collins, Rifle and Durango, Colorado)
The methodology for the rankings is not just about hunting and fishing opportunities—the magazine also took into account “quality of life” factors, including the economy, crime rates, housing prices, income and commute times. Still, the hook and bullet factors were weighted more heavily (60/40, the magazine says) to come up with the rankings.
The list got me thinking about the issue of how the hook and bullet factor plays into the new Western economy and how, in some places, the shift is changing the character of these landscapes. One paragraph from the intro to the rankings really drove that home:
Demographers say America’s small towns are disappearing as youngsters migrate to cities for work or college, then move to suburbs to raise families. But our research indicates that small towns are thriving, especially those trade centers with populations between 5,000 and 15,000. These are the places where rural landscapes abut the city limits, where wildlife habitat is healthy and intact, where there are plenty of “retail therapy” opportunities. And where you can always find a “hunter’s breakfast” on the cafe menu.
I wasn’t quite sure what exactly to take away from that, but it seemed to make the claim that because of the quality of life factors—including largely, access to hunting and fishing—towns like those in the list are just dandy, and that struck me as simplistic.
I’m aware that “proximity to recreation” including hunting and fishing could be one of the saving graces for small communities here in Montana and across the region and indeed, communities like Lewistown and Choteau in Montana are on the upswing because of it.
But as a product of rural Montana who has seen anecdotally what the hook and bullet economy “gives back” to these communities, I know it’s not a silver bullet for towns like the one I grew up in. Hunting or fishing season means more cheese fries sold at the Café Dutton and more gas revenue for the MountainView Co-op, but school enrollment continues to drop, stores continue to close and families continue to move away for better job opportunities.
And, if (completely) in their stead, “retail therapy” shops and amenity ranch owners move in, as they have in many of these communities (for reasons detailed in the list), what’s lost—while intangible—isn’t to be ignored. It’s the classic conundrum of the New West—the delicate balance of capitalizing on the quality of life that makes where we live so attractive while understanding that in doing so, we can destroy the very reason we’re attractive in the first place.
Something to ponder while looking at the rankings, anyway.
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Comments
Their research is a little suspect - Helena has 27,000 people in the city limits but 40,000 in the Metro area. Here's another statistic for them:
Anglers visible from the Wolf Creek bridge at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday last July = 67.
Not exactly paradise.
Northern Idaho got a bad rep for separatists, a place for inner city cops to retire to. So now the deal is to woo the early retirement money, the trustafarians, and the home office crowd. And every one takes up space that was once rangeland, farmland, timberland, uses clean water and fouls it in the process. After a while, some place else is at the top of the list. Some place else has fewer people, cheaper land, cleaner water, just waiting to be fouled by white flight, people in need of book material, a trendy address. There is never a good ending to this story.
Unfortunately, bearbait is so right. Though I might disagree with the idea that rangeland and farmland are any more paradise than 20 and forty acre subdivisions. The first stirs visions of land and stream beds trampled and polluted by thousands of cows, while the latter implies hundreds of acres privatized and stripped of native vegetation.
As jabster suggests, however, lifelong residents of these towns are now learning what it must have been like for native Americans to watch their "paradise" being stripped away by the white man.
Lists like this appear every now and again (in fact, I believe there is even an annual one), and how sad it must be to no longer see your town after it has been on them. If the population of the planet continues to increase at it's current rate (+3 people per second), places like these will cease to exist, and lists of this nature become obsolete. Then it truly will be "Paradise Lost" for all of us.
Courtney makes a good point about the "amenity" thing.
I would add the pitching of the West as an amenity was a stupid thing to do, because it drew people who had amenities as a primary "value."
But amenities don't really provide a living. The "scenery dividend" was and is a flaming line of BS because so many employers use it to justify paying below-market wages and benefits. Been there, done that.
The more-realistic long-term view would have been better focused on the real strength of living here...doing real work in real places that happen to be real pretty, paying real wages. The landscape it all happens in is just the gravy...don't forget the rest of dinner.
As for amenities and jobs: most folks I see moving in have all the money they need....retired and just coming here for the amenities.
Outside, National Georgraphic Adventure, and Backpacker do these lists too.
Frank,
You are right that the real problem is increasing human population. No one in these towns that has had more than two kids has a right to complain about outsiders ruining their town. The fact is that our lax immirgation laws are a huge problem. We have four million a year coming here. But it is not politically correct to deport those here illegaly or to keep others out. Native born Americans would have achieved zero population growth in the 1970s had it not been for immigration. The people coming here come from cultures that value large families and have no frontier heritage. Therefore, loss of wilderness means nothing to them.