Do You ACTUALLY Know Montana's Biggest City?

Montana is one of those states in the U.S. where you never really know what to do with it. There's no major city like Denver in Colorado or Seattle in Washington, but there are six different metropolitan areas with either more than 100,000 residents or somewhere around there. Have you ever actually thought about which one is actually the largest, though? Well, let's take a look. Butte comes to many people's minds as one of the largest cities in Montana, or at least a major city. But it has a population of just 36,000 people, peaking in the 1920s at 42,000. Because of its industrial nature, it simply hasn't benefited off of the current economies that give the West growth. It ends up being unattractive to young people wanting to move to the mountains. Next up, then, is Great Falls. Great Falls has a population of 85,000 in its metropolitan area, and it's very clearly outside the mountains, but that doesn't answer the entire question. It's just two and a half hours from Glacier National Park, which is a clear draw in the state. Sure, it's on the more isolated side of major cities, only being used by those traveling north or south on I-15, but this does not mean it's a complete middle-of-nowhere city. It's also home to the unsigned Interstate 315, which is under a mile long and contributes basically nothing to the state. Next, we have the capital city of Helena. If you learned geography in school, you probably have heard of the capital city and treat it like its own major city, but it's still just fifth on this list. Just like the last one, it's only on I-15, meaning it gets very little cross-country traffic unless you're heading up to Canada or something. With that being said, it's right on the mountains, so it draws that population section, but it doesn't have incredible significance outside of that fact. Moving up then, we have another large metropolitan area that people really haven't heard of, and that's the Kalispell Metro. This is what I find to be the most interesting metro in Montana, since it's fully off of any interstate highway, instead being at the crossroads of US-93 and US-2. It has that isolation, but it's the grouping of Kalispell, Columbia Falls, and Whitefish being the gateway to Glacier National Park. This means its top economy is obviously tourism, and you see this with places like West Glacier, which is included in the metropolitan area. Flathead County, the metro area, has 115.4 thousand residents, and it is growing. We then have the third largest metro, and I think it's fairly possible if you ask someone what the biggest city in Montana is, they might be most likely to say Missoula. The metropolitan area has 128.6 thousand residents, and it's home to the University of Montana. Located within the mountains in the western region of the state, it's also along I-90, so you have plenty of cross-country drivers that see and stop here. Since the next major city isn't for around an hour and a half, this means it's built up on the highway. There are plenty of hotels and places to stop with truck stops and other attractions, and the downtown is right there on the highway, and so it might just fool people who are driving by. The second largest metropolitan area in Montana, then, is Bozeman, consisting of all of Gallatin County. Funnily enough, it has 128.7 thousand residents, making it just about 100 people larger than Missoula. In actuality, this means they are entirely interchangeable when it comes to size, but their makeup is slightly different. What you see with Bozeman is that this entire valley is populated, split between it and Belgrade and the rural areas, so the perception is that it's smaller than it actually is. It's just that the urban areas are spread throughout two different municipalities in the surrounding regions. All in all though, the largest city and metro in Montana is the Billings Metro. It's located well outside of the mountains in the middle of the state. Billings is at the fork of I-94 and I-90, and it has the other metros beat by quite a bit. It has 193,000 residents, and it's growing relatively quickly. It was founded as a railroad hub and grew as a large economic and trade center. Right now, it is a large energy hub since it sits upon a large coal reserve south of there. But what it means as that large economic and trade center is that there is nothing else here. I mean, look around. The entire region needs a hub for services, and Billings' economy began to grow off of that, and it's continued to this day. There's your answer. Thanks for watching.