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The Cities of Montana

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I might have mentioned this before, but although Montana is the 4th largest state in the US, it ranks 43th in population, with only about a million people in the entire state. I’m not counting college students. If the college students are counted, the population is a few thousand higher.

With this background, I thought it might be of interest to show some pictures of the “cities” in Montana. This does a really good job of showing what it means to have a small population. The town I live in has about 800 people in it, and there are many towns that are smaller.

Since there are only a handful of population centers in the state, none of the “cities” have the towering skylines of Denver, New York City, or Seattle.

Montana’s State Capital

This is Helena, Montana, our capital. There are around 30,000 people living here, which still makes it one of the biggest towns in Montana. Seriously, how many people really think of a town of 30,000 as a city? 

Hopefully, this puts things into perspective and explains why our town of 800 isn't especially small in Montana. Put in a different way, there is a person for every 7 square miles of Montana. That puts Montana's population density at 48th in the US.

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Written by Rex Trulove

6 Comments

    • Thank you. Montana is a wide open and largely unspoiled state. The strangest thing is that the people here, as a whole, are friendlier and more helpful than those of any other state I’ve ever been to.

  2. It’s crazy that the population of Missoula is smaller than the population of some of the suburbs surrounding Chicago. Also, this post will be helpful since Gov. Bullock from Montana is one of the many Democrats who is running for President. A visual of the landscape gives me the idea that he is doing some major things in a state that is mostly conservative, which means that he could possibly make a run or be a viable VP option for the primary winner.

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    • I suspect that if a good, strong Republican candidate ran against our governor, Bullock would be defeated. He isn’t very well liked by the people. One of our Senators, Tester, is also a Democrat and almost certainly would have been defeated in the mid-terms if it wasn’t for all the Pac and Super-Pac money the Democrats poured in to get him reelected. Tester got more money for reelection than ANY other Democrat Senator who was running in the US, yet he barely got reelected. Bullock’s days as a governor are most likely numbered.

      Missoula is also smaller than many of the suburbs of cities in California. Expanding that a little, both Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon have populations that are greater than the entire state of Montana. One of the reasons that tourism is such a huge draw and a major industry in Montana is because people love going to a place where there are so few people.

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