Why doesn’t Montana have a major city like how Seattle, Portland or Denver have it?

20 comments

1. The same reason Wyoming, Vermont and other largely rural states don’t.

2. Someone asked a similar question like last week, I forget if it was about a specific state or just that general region of the country.

   Basically it boils down to a few things:
   * Bad for agriculture (mostly, everyone knows about Idaho potatoes), good for industries (ranching, drilling/mining) that don’t need a ton of people in permanent settlements.
   * Harsh terrain and climate
   * Geographically isolated from the coasts and the “heartland”
   * No river systems/bodies of water that are useful for transportation
   * They were settled later in the nation’s history, when the railroads were becoming king, and important rail lines never went through this part of the country

   Maybe there’s more I’m forgetting but I think that’s about the long and short of it.

3. Trade

4. Montana has pretty extreme weather, has no major navigable rivers, and is a difficult place to grow any sort of crops due to the long winters and mountainous terrain. It’s also difficult to drive across for months in the winter because of various mountain passes that are snowed in on a regular basis.

   Due to all this it has very low population density, just like most of the other mountain west states. None of those areas have any large cities. Denver isn’t really in the mountains, it’s more next to the mountains and sits as a major transportation crossroads. Seattle and Portland are ports and this kickstarted those cities when they were first founded.

5. Location and Railroad. I mean Seattle and Portland are on the coast so that’s a bit obvious. Denver sprung up because it was a gold mining town. Then some smart investors linked to a national rail line when it was looking after gold dried up.

6. The cattle could never reach a consensus on where to build one. Same problem the sheep had in Wyoming.

   (Just having a little fun. I love both those states.)

7. Apples and oranges.

8. There was never a reason for it to have big cities

9. Montana does not have a port city or major logistical center. Montana does have oil – but not many refineries and service centers for the oil patch. So you basically have a state whose economy is tied up in primary resource extraction / service sector that just does not command a larger population.

   Montana also does not have extensive irrigation networks either, so that really puts a damper on speciality crop production. I live only 60 miles north of Montana in Alberta, Canada – so extremely similar climate, terrain, etc. We have about 5X the population of Montana because we have major oil production service and logistical centers (Calgary / Edmonton), and we have far more irrigation here so produce specialty crops (Sugar Beets, Potatoes, Hemp, Sunflowers, etc). Montana just lacks in all of these things, so growth potential is somewhat limited.

10. Possibly it doesn’t need one.

11. Along with what others have already pointed out. Montana is also decentralized on top of that.

    Greater Denver, Seattle, and Portland all make up half the population of their respective states.

    In Montana the two largest urban areas (Bozeman and Missoula) combined only make up 20%

12. Why compare Montana to Portland and Seattle? They’re about 500 miles (800 km) away and on the other side of the continental divide.

    If you want more salient comparisons, look at states that Montana actually borders like Wyoming and the Dakotas. Very similar in terms of human geography.

13. Give it 20 to 30 years and wouldn’t be surprised if Montana had a Boise sized city or two.

14. Most large cities are port cities that grow up around waterways.

    Seattle is right on the Pacific Ocean, and is thus a good port city.

    Portland is on the Columbia River, which is a water way to the Pacific Ocean.

    Denver is not on a waterway, and it was a small city for most of its existence. It only recently experienced an explosion in population in the past 10 years.

15. Approach from the other direction: why *would* there be a big city in Montana?

16. Hard to have a major city when there’s nobody in the entire state… there’s no industry or transportation reason for a concentration of people there

17. It has Billings. Not too big, but Montana only has about 1 million people.

18. One big missing component I’m not seeing in the answers is that much development in the US, even going back centuries, has been private development, and a supermajority of Montana land is still owned and by default managed by the US Government. Parcels would need to be designated by Congress and, if history is a guide, sold prior to construction.

19. Why doesn’t Switzerland have a major city like England has London?

20. You’ve never been to Hannah, Montana?