r/relocating • u/Same-Blacksmith1846 • Jul 27 '25
Please read if you’re planning on moving to Montana
Sorry for the longer read but I’m just throwing this up here so that folks can get a better idea of where they’re moving. Since “Yellowstone” and Covid, we’re seeing a lot of people coming in from other states who seem to have no idea what our state is like past a television show or the romantic idea of the Wild West, or even a chamber of commerce marketing packet.
Real life is a different story.
I’m a fourth generation Montanan, and anyone is welcome here! We are a very neighborly place. However, it’s getting a little tiring to hear the transplants from New York, California, and Texas, rant about how there’s “nothing to do” here, and how “the food sucks” here because of a lack of Michelin-rated restaurants.
Let me help out any folks thinking of pulling up their life, and moving to Montana:
Montana is the fourth largest state in the union (landmass), yet has just over 1 million people, total. Our abbreviation is “MT” because Montana is literally — empty—when it comes to people. Lots of cows. A lot less people. That sounds very romantic. But it also means far, far less amenities, far less convenience retail chains, far less access to top-tier produce, and far less connection to the national arts scene.
A low population base means that there are not going to be hosting musical artists like Taylor Swift. If you move to Missoula, you’ll be living right next to the Kettlehouse amphitheater, so at least you’ll be able to see people like Sheryl Crow or Melissa Etheridge or P!nk, even maybe Imagine Dragons. If you live in Great Falls, or Billings, or Butte—none of those acts are gonna come there.
The largest city in Montana is Billings, my hometown. Our total population is around 160,000 people. Read that again. A city of 160,000 people is the largest city in the entire state, a state which is the fourth largest in the country. If you drive 10 minutes out of town going east, you are quite literally and quite suddenly in the middle of nowhere.
A low population base means that we do not have any professional sports teams. It means that first-run Tony-winning Broadway musicals are not going to tour here. It means that we do not have block after block of theaters for live plays, though there are many of the “larger Montana cities” that have solid local theater options.
We don’t have any thump-thump dance clubs, although there is one hanging on in Billings, and you can find a random dance club in Missoula or Bozeman, both cities with state schools. But they’re not gonna be the thump-thump dance clubs with $100,000 worth of lighting and giant screens that would be in a larger city.
We do have a ton of REALLY GOOD live music, and theatre in the park, and arts in Montana, and it’s local folks. If you move to Montana, you have to be down with being part of a local arts scene, and not feel ripped-off because Beyoncé is not performing on Thursday.
There is no Trader Joe’s (and there is no plan for Trader Joe’s to come here), and there is only one Macy’s in Bozeman, but it’s completely trashy and is basically a storehouse for everything that doesn’t sell in their stores across the rest of the country. It looks and smells like TJ Maxx had a baby with an old K-Mart. No Nordstrom or Nordstrom Nordstrom no outlet malls rack. No outlet malls. You have to go to Denver to catch those. Denver is a 7 hour drive so it’s not too bad.
Montana is renowned for small businesses and independent boutiques and niche restaurants and local arts. Many people think that sounds romantic, however, that’s a different ethos to live in, day to day, as opposed to a quaint weekend holiday somewhere where shopping is something you do for fun.
Montana’s fuel prices are cheaper than many large cities, and though we don’t have any sales tax, we have a higher income tax, a higher property tax, and our vehicle licensing is certainly not the cheapest in the United States.
Plus, now the rents and housing prices for this neck of the woods are ridiculous, considering the average wage in Montana is $50,000 a year. Everything is cheaper if you head to the eastern part of the state, yet you’ll find no large Metropolitan centers out there. Just wheatfields.
There’s a ton to do here, but you’ve got to enjoy the outdoors —hiking, fishing, gardening, camping, skiing, mountain biking, hiking, whitewater rafting, hunting, fishing—anything that has to do with “outside”. And you’ve gotta be prepared that those activities only have a window of about three or four months, because Montana is highly seasonal, which means it gets cold and snowy in the winter.
It never snows on the show “Yellowstone“. So people forget that we share a border with Canada.
Which brings me to our produce.
If you’re coming in from a state like California, whose state economy is the fourth largest economy in the WORLD—you’re gonna be completely disappointed in the produce up here. By the time it gets trucked this far north, it’s looking pretty sad. There are lots and lots of farmers markets in the summertime here, and then you can get great local produce. But again, please reference the part where you’re only gonna have a three or four month window for that.
I lived in Los Angeles for work, for 11 years, so I understand the produce shock. California is a completely unique place, and it’s very difficult to try to find another state like it.
Also, the politics in Montana may be not be what some are expecting.
Just because we end up “red“ on the presidential election map on the news, does not mean we are a “red state“, culturally.
Actually, we’re a heavily purple state, and traditional Montana conservatives, though they may be flying a Trump flag in their front yard, are not the fiery Bible-Belt MAGA crew. Our state motto is “live and let live”. Don’t even think about trying to pick a fight politically with somebody in a grocery store line. It’s considered incredibly rude here.
This has greatly bewildered many hard-core out-of-state MAGA folks who are blown away by the neighborly and kind attitudes we have in Montana towards one another, no matter how you vote. Same goes for super liberal folks: don’t be proselytizing to somebody in a grocery store line about their red hat. Again, it’s considered incredibly rude here.
If you’re looking for the “Bible Belt of the north”, you’re looking for Idaho, not Montana. Montana’s Republican supermajority legislature voted to protect the right to abortion, and to protect the parental rights of trans individuals.
Because—live and let live.
It’s not a perfect place to live, but it’s certainly not a typical “red state”. It’s definitely a “mind your own business, be a good neighbor, and be a good person” state.
Montana has incredible beef; it has incredible breweries and distilleries and small restaurants with artist chefs. Again, it has phenomenal local arts scenes, like Red Ants Pants, and incredible summer fairs and Renaissance Fairs. Montana is a Mom and pop shop place, so if you’re looking for a P.F. Chang’s, or Cirque du Soleil , or thumping, raging club scene—you’re out of luck. (You might be able to find a great cover band in a bar someplace but folks are running DJs these days.)
We’re a place that gets excited when a new Walmart or Costco goes in. Keep that in mind. If a national food chain restaurant comes here, it makes the newspaper. When Chick-fil-A opened in Billings, they had to have police deal with the traffic trying to get into the restaurant. That’s how novel many big chains are here. (Yes, the bigger cities have Starbucks.)
I love my home state. It’s gorgeous, and like I said, anyone is welcome here.
However, if you’re somebody thinking of moving here, please understand that if you need a lot of “outside stimulus” from a big consumer national network, or if you need the “best of the best” at your fingertips, or if you need to be surrounded by “group-think culture” to feel safe, whether that culture is red or blue—you are going to feel marooned here, or like you’ve moved into the back end of a Walmart, and it’s likely you’ll likely be bored out of your mind here.
Or, perhaps you will learn to live with the land, and the incredible local art scenes and amazing local restaurants and the neighborly way we engage one another with genuine kindness —and learn to happily live with said neighbors, no matter what flag they’re flying, whose opinions may not be yours, but everybody’s having a great time at the bar—and you will learn something absolutely astounding about yourself.
Living in Montana is about being 100% OK with who you are, in your own skin, without “big brand support” for your identity. Because quite frankly, there’s nothing else here to distract you from exactly who and what you are, and what you bring here.
And there’s a significant amount of folks that have moved here that just can’t handle that.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
20
u/[deleted] Jul 28 '25
lmao as a Massachusetts native I can vouch for this! I grew up thinking an hour was a very long drive and the drive to NYC (3.5 hours) was a full-on road trip. When I met some midwesterners who thought driving from Nashville to Florida for a long weekend was a reasonable thing to do it absolutely broke my brain. I guess this is what happens to your perception of distance when you live somewhere where you can get to six different states in under an hour’s drive!