Men’s Journal magazine ranks Missoula No. 1 Best Place to live among small towns in the U.S.

An out-of-town visitor brought a double surprise wrapped in a copy of Men’s Journal magazine to Mayor Mike Kadas’ office last week.

Inside was a story declaring Missoula as the No. 1 small town in the nation. And the photo over the story was a view of the city with a paraglider flying off Mount Jumbo – a paraglider with Kadas attached.

By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian

http://missoulian.com/articles/2004/05/16/news/local/news02.txt

"They were doing a big meet here in ’97 or ’98, and they said they’d take me for a ride," Kadas said of the tandem flight. "I’m too dumb to turn anything like that down. I’ve got the same picture in my office."

Missoula led New Paltz, N.Y., Morgantown, W.Va., Apalachicola, Fla., and Kerrville, Texas, as best small town under 100,000 people. The best big city was San Diego, followed by Portland, Ore., Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Austin, Texas.

Men’s Journal Senior Editor Tom Foster said this is the third year the magazine has done the survey. It has changed its measuring system each year, so there isn’t much repetition from survey to survey. This time, it looked at a number of health and recreation factors, including cancer and diabetes rates, annual snowfall, days of sunshine, proximity to major sports teams or events, and amount of undeveloped land nearby. Those combined with the more common rankings of population, cost of living and house prices.

Foster said the survey also includes a few "wild cards," such as the number of bars and bookstores, and the ratio of men to women in town and the community’s body-mass index.

"Missoula has a lot of land nearby where you can get out and have a good time," Foster said. "And you can see there’s a lot of college towns on the list. With a college, you have the cultural benefits of a larger town than it really is."

Missoula City-County Health Department Director Ellen Leahy said she was pleased to see the health factors make a difference.

"I’m real proud of getting the environmental rating," Leahy said. "And I’m not surprised we got a good rating on health areas. We tend to run a bit better (than the national average) in areas related to activity, and related areas like diabetes or obesity. Although our suicide rate for young men is much higher than the national average here."

So is Missoula’s tendency for getting ranked in national magazines, it would seem. Just two months ago, Inc. Magazine declared Missoula the No. 2 small place to do business in the country. Last year, Forbes magazine called the Garden City its No. 11 small place for business and careers. An Internet operation called ePodunk.com rated us as No. 15 for historic preservation efforts in 2001, and Utne Reader had Missoula as its No. 11 best place in 1997.

"It continues to reinforce that we are nationally known and will continue to be nationally advertised," Kadas said. "I think it’s a real mix of factors. There are natural amenities that bring a lot of value, and when you mix that with the university, and a functional and dynamic downtown, a good K-12 education system and relatively low unemployment, that combination makes things work."

Missoula Chamber of Commerce President Bob Tutskey agreed the city is a good match for Men’s Journal.

"It fits well with the lifestyle of Men’s Journal, which is an active, healthy one," Tutskey said. "Missoula is a great town with an active lifestyle. That makes us a great place from a business perspective. And these rankings are not only good for attracting new business. They work really well as tourism incentives. People see this is a nice place to swing through this summer on the way to Glacier Park."

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at [email protected]

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Men’s Journal Magazine http://www.mensjournal.com/

#1 – Missoula, MT

City of Missoula: http://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/

The Missoula Area Economic Development Corporation (MAEDC) http://maedc.org/

Missoula Chamber of Commerce http://www.missoulachamber.com

Discover Missoula http://www.missoulamap.com/Missoula_Map_2003.htm

Population – 57,053

Median household income – $40,912

Median home price – $171,200

Climate- Summers in the 80’s, Rocky Mountain winters, 17 inches of rain, and 51 inches of snow.

"I came over the Hellroaring Pass into Missoula in 1966," says best-selling crime novelist James Lee Burke. "I told my wife: This is it, I’m staying until I kick the bucket. It’s an amazing place."

He’s not the first to have done that, and it’s easy to see why. Missoula sits on a glacial lake bed at the intersection of five valleys and four rivers – two of which, the Bitterroot and the Clark Fork, slice right through town (giving Norman Maclean his title "A River Runs Through It"). During the summer there’s blue-ribbon trout fishing in every direction, and mountain bikers rule the old logging roads and ski runs above town. During winter, which is generally milder than in the rest of the region, Montana Snowbowl http://www.montanasnowbowl.com/ boasts the state’s best tree skiing.

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"Missoula ruins so many careers. People visit, and then throw everything away just so they can stay." James Lee Burke

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The one potential downside here is jobs: Be prepared to take up crime fiction unless you can land a gig in tourism http://www.missoulacvb.org/, education (the University of Montana)http://www.umt.edu/ , the Forest Service, or at one of the multitude of nonprofits base here, such as the Adventure Cycling Association http://www.adv-cycling.org/ and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation http://www.rmef.org/

Buying In – You’ll pay a little more than the national average here, but that’s more than fair given the setting. Prices range from $159,000 for a new two-bedroom ranch to $650,000 for a sprawling mountain chalet.