Missoula, MT Summer Camps

About Missoula, MT

Missoula i / m ? ? z u? l ? / is a city in the U.S. state of Montana and is the county seat of Missoula County . It is located along the Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers in Western Montana and at the convergence of five mountain ranges, thus is often described as being the "Hub of Five Valleys". The 2010 Census put the population of Missoula at 66,788 and the Missoula Metropolitan Area at 109,299. Since 2000, Missoula has been the second largest city in Montana. Missoula was founded in 1860 and named Hellgate Trading Post while still part of Washington Territory. By 1866, the settlement had moved five miles upstream and renamed Missoula Mills before being shortened to Missoula. The desire for a more convenient water supply to power a lumber and flour mill led to the movement of the settlement to its modern location in 1864. The mills provided supplies to western settlers traveling along the Mullan Road with Fort Missoula, set up in 1877 to protect the settlers, further stabilizing the economy. The arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883 was coupled with rapid growth and the maturation of the local lumber industry. An element of prestige could be claimed ten years later when what was already called the City of Missoula was chosen by the Montana Legislature as the site for the new state’s first university. Along with the U.S. Forest Service headquarters founded in 1908, lumber and the university would remain staples of the local economy for the next hundred years. By the 1990s, Missoula’s lumber industry had gradually disappeared, and today the city’s largest employers are the University of Montana and Missoula’s two hospitals. The city is governed by a mayor-council government with twelve city council members, two from each of the six wards. In and around Missoula are 400 acres of parkland, 22 miles of trails, and nearly 5,000 acres of open-space conservation land with adjacent Mount Jumbo home to grazing elk and mule deer during the winter months. The city is also home to both Montana’s largest and its oldest active breweries as well as the Montana Grizzlies , one of the strongest college football programs in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision of the National Collegiate Athletic Association . Notable residents include the first women in Congress, Jeanette Rankin and the United States’ longest-serving Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield .

History of Missoula, MT

History History of Missoula, Montana Teepees set up in modern-day Missoula south of the Clark Fork River , facing east Archaeological artifacts date the Missoula Valley's earliest inhabitants to the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago with settlements as early as 3,500 BCE. From the 1700s until European settlements began a hundred years later, the land was primarily used by populations of the Salish , Kootenai , Pend d'Oreille , Blackfeet , and Shoshone tribes. Located at the confluence of five mountain valleys, the Missoula Valley was heavily traversed by local and distant native tribes that periodically went to the Eastern Montana plains in search of bison , leading to inevitable conflict. The narrow valley at Missoula's eastern entrance was so strewn with human bones from repeated ambushes that French fur trappers would later refer to this area as "Porte d' Enfer," translated as "Hell's Gate". Hell Gate would remain the name of the area until it was renamed "Missoula" in 1866. Western exploration to the area began with the Lewis and Clark Expedition , which stopped twice just south of Missoula at Traveler's Rest before splitting up on the return journey, with Clark taking the southern route along the Bitterroot River and Lewis travelling north through Hellgate Canyon on July 4. In 1860 Hell Gate Village was established just west of Missoula by Christopher P. Higgins and Francis Worden as a trading post to serve travelers of the recently completed Mullan Road , the first wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains to the inland of the Pacific Northwest . The desire for a more convenient water supply to power a lumber and flour mill led to the movement of the settlement to its modern location in 1864. Looking west toward the Bitterroot Mountains over Missoula from Mount Sentinel The Missoula Mills replaced Hell Gate Village as the economic power of the valley and replaced it as the county seat in 1866.

Missoula, MT City Statistics: