Montana is fashionable now, a place where the rich and famous buy big ranches, where movies are made, where old logging towns peddle espresso and fresh croissants.
There is a patina of prosperity as towns such as Bozeman and Kalispell, once frontier outposts on Montana's sprawling map, are discovered again. The scenery is spectacular, the people friendly and the crimes mostly minor. Outdoor life beckons.But a man who has tracked Montana's economy for a quarter-century says that while a few places have at least the appearance of taking off, the state as a whole is struggling.
"Only in Montana would anyone call the current conditions prosperous," said Paul Polzin, director of the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research.
Montana nonfarm income in 1990 was about 5 percent less than in 1980 after an adjustment for inflation, Polzin said. In 1992, Montana workers' average annual pay ranked 48th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Polzin points to job losses in high-paying industries such as logging and mining, and expansion in the lower-paying service jobs, many of them tied to tourism. Montana's unemployment rate in August was 5.7 percent.
Kalispell welcomed a computer products company that moved from Washington this fall. Just a few months ago, a plastics manufacturer left New York for Belgrade. Together they will employ about 120 people.
But Troy lost 300 jobs when a mine closed last spring, and Libby and Bonner are bracing for the disappearance of twice that many timber jobs. In Helena, there are workshops for state employees who may be laid off.
Are these good times or bad times? They are both.
"After 10 years of things being abysmal, we're just getting back to zero," Polzin said.
Growth and prosperity in the Intermountain West are in the major urban areas, he said, and Montana doesn't have any. The largest city is Billings, where the estimated population is 110,000 with the fringe area figured in.
The entire state had only 803,655 residents in 1990, according to the census. That compares with 786,690 a decade earlier. The latest estimate, for 1991, is 808,488.
It is hard to say how many people move into Montana, said Polzin colleague Jim Sylvester, but he does know this: The number of people who are from here and move out has dropped. Birth and death rates haven't changed.
Real estate agents in Helena, Billings and elsewhere report brisk sales to out-of-staters and say people are moving in from all over. But a Montana State University sociologist has found that in the Bozeman area, at least, few newcomers stay long.
"They're blowing through faster than ever," said Pat Jobes, who has tracked Bozeman-area immigrants since the 1970s. He has concluded that 80 percent of those who arrived in the 1980s have moved out. Reasons range from low salaries to the realization that personal problems can't be solved by a change of scenery.
Regardless of whether they stay, those who move in need houses. Some people say newcomers cash-rich from profitable home sales elsewhere have pushed prices beyond the reach of longtime Montanans.
In Kalispell, the Flathead Board of Realtors says the average selling price of a three-bedroom home this year is $98,142, compared to $79,801 last year.
"So many of our native sons and daughters and grandmas and grandpas don't make the big bucks," said Kalispell Mayor Douglas Rauthe, a native Montanan who came back from California 18 years ago. "For a lot of young people, all they can do is rent an apartment or buy a used trailer house."
Some analysts say Montana real estate values had stagnated, even declined in some places, and are finally catching up. They also point to the rising cost of lumber and say new construction isn't keeping pace with demand, because builders burned in housing recessions are being cautious.
The real estate pinch and other elements of Montana's changing style brought an apology from fashion designer Liz Claiborne when she spoke at a recent museum benefit in Great Falls.
Claiborne said she was sorry if her moving to Montana contributed to problems such as higher property values. But she also said she and her husband care about the state as their home.
Apart from people like Claiborne or Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, who raise bison on Turner's Flying D Ranch in the Gallatin Valley, what do newcomers do for a living?
Some are retired. No one seems certain about the rest.
There is hiring by companies like Mac's Place, the Kalispell computer business; and Frank Products, the plastics manufacturer. But a number of people create their own work.
"There just aren't many jobs here that would support my family," said Dan Dalessi, who opened Elliott's Eatery in Bozeman two years ago after moving from Southern California. Summer customers included NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw, who owns a Montana ranch.
Now, the cafe is up for sale, and Dalessi wants to move to Lewistown in central Montana. Bozeman is a little too glitzy, he said.
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(Additional information)
Bozeman: a town rediscovered
Bozeman is becoming a town rediscovered within the past few years for its coziness and hospitality, cost of living, university environment and closeness to the mountains.
See Page E2 for the following:
- Not long ago, Christopher Pope's toy store existed only in a management thesis he wrote at Yale. Pope himself was in the thick of corporate life in Washington, D.C. Today, the Great Rocky Mountain Toy Co. is a magnet on Main Street.
- Main Street still has the smoky Cowboy Cafe and a Western-wear shop with a life-size palomino revolving in front, but increasingly, the boutiques and upscale restaurants characterize downtown Bozeman.