Missoula

Missoula, city, seat (1866) of Missoula county, western Montana, U.S. It is situated on Clark Fork of the Columbia River, at the mouth of the Bitterroot River, near the Bitterroot Range in a broad valley (elevation 3,223 feet [982 metres]). The first white settler in the area was Father Pierre-Jean de Smet, who in 1841 founded St. Mary’s Mission at nearby Stevensville. Missoula originated in the 1860s as a trading post on the Mullan Road, a wilderness trail between Fort Benton, Montana, and Walla Walla, Washington. It was formerly called Hellgate Village (like Hellgate Canyon, reportedly named for the carnage found there by French trappers); the etymology of its present name is uncertain, but it is thought to derive from a Salish Indian phrase meaning “cold water.” Its development was stimulated after 1883, when it became a division point on the Northern Pacific Railway, and with the founding there of the University of Montana in 1893.

Missoula’s economy centres on lumber and paper milling, dairying, agricultural marketing, tourism, and educational facilities. An entry point to Lolo National Forest (headquartered at Missoula) and Clearwater, Bitterroot, and Flathead national forests, it is the regional headquarters for the U.S. Forest Service and Montana State Forest Service. It is also the site of the Intermountain Fire Sciences Laboratory (formerly the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory) and is the training centre for the smoke-jumping crews of forest-fire fighters. Fort Missoula (a pioneer stockade) and the Flathead Indian Reservation are nearby. Missoula is the hometown of Jeannette Rankin, first female member of the U.S. Congress. Inc. 1885. Pop. (2000) 57,053; Missoula Metro Area, 95,802; (2010) 66,788; Missoula Metro Area, 109,299.