Montana - Butte?

[AmyMN]

Just wondering if people could tell me a little bit about life in Butte?

I like raw dairy, free range meats, organic foods. I want to be somewhere where I can feel free, breathe in the air, enjoy life. Simple living, relaxed people.

Would love to have a natural practitioner. Like my chiropractor here does muscle testing for Standard Process supplements.

Would like to get a cheap one-bedroom apartment. How much is rent there?

[deesygirl]

I hate to say this...but Butte should probably be at the bottom of your list. One tiny, lousy, natural food market here. While the owner is very nice and she will order in items, the food selection is very sparce and many items are out of date. We usually end up going to the Co-Op in Bozeman for our grocery items.

The community as a whole doesn't really support this type of lifestyle. When I first moved here I was really the odd ball out. People still think I am strange because I support extended breast feeding, no circs (my boys are 25 and 21), cloth diapers...you get the picture. I am currently raising my grandson and I have found it to be very difficult if you have views that differ from the norm.

Rents are cheap. A couple hundered will get you a nice 1 br apartment. That will give you the extra money you need to travel to buy your grocery items. Another drawback is the wages. Even with a degree... don't expect much.

[AmyMN]

How's the nature? The downtown?

[deesygirl]

Butte has a nature/walking trail. It runs along the interstate but also borders our wetland area. We quit using it as some people here think it is funny to train their bird dogs on the ducks and geese. We had a neat walking trail up the mountain but the railroad claimed it was on their property so they shut it down. The community is trying to get it opened back up. There are a couple of neat places to go that are not to far out of town.

As for downtown...well, Butte is a little backward there. Uptown is where all the smaller stores are, as well as alot of history and culture. For the last two years we have hosted the National Folk Festival. That has been awsome but next year will be the last it will be hosted here.

You can look through our local newspaper, mtstandard.com. You can look through some of the older articles to get a better idea of the town. You can also scan through the rentals.

[kdaisy]

As a Montana native, who has never lived in Butte...my two cents are this:

Butte has a bad vibe to it. It is a very old town with a lot of bad ecological history to it. Here is a short write up on the Berkeley Pit. I myself would worry about the pollution in the ground water.

I have known some lovely people from Butte and some not so lovely. A friend of mine recently moved there for school and has done nothing but complain about it.

So, I apologize to any Butte fans, and I know there are some.

But if you want somewhere crunchy and nature-y in western MT, I would point you towards Missoula.

[Amberenergy]

I have to agree with kdaisy, for us we chose Bozeman because the winters aren't as dark as Missoula, but Missoula is more affordable and has more jobs. The hiking etc. are great. I think Butte is cool to visit, but like pp said, it has a weird vibe IMO. It's like those companies came in and raped the land until it turned really toxic. It's sad, when you are driving over the divide, the first thing you see is this huge sad opened up mountain.
Montana is the most beautiful state and place I've ever seen. But Butte is not the place you would want to settle. They do have arts, etc. though...

[quinnsmum]

I was born and raised in Butte. The people of Butte are amazing, hospitable, hard working, would do anything for their neighbor. Don't bother renting because you can get a mortgage cheaper than rent! I would love to be able to live there again, however, for the reasons posted above, I cannot. Mostly due to the fact that the air, ground, and most likely the water is toxic. There are thousands and thousands of miles of underground mine tunnels that I don't trust, and they still continue to rape the mountains surrounding. And the Pit?? Don't even get me started on that one...

I honestly don't know what to tell you about where to live in MT. Amberenergy stated that "Missoula is more affordable and has more jobs". I respectfully disagree with Missoula being affordable. It is completely unaffordable, it doesn't really matter what city you compare it to. There are 4 counties in MT that are classified as unaffordable. Bozeman, Kalispell and Hamilton rounding out that list. And with my husband having his bachelors degree and being out of work for over 1 year now, I also respectfully disagree with Missoula having more jobs. We barely eek out a living here and we rent. Maybe Helena? Dillon? I think you would be able to find a market for freerange beef anywhere in MT. It is MT you know. raw milk...well...??? If you can "afford" it, I suppose Missoula and Bozeman would best suit your lifestyle. Best of luck!!!

[quinnsmum]

Oh..one last thing if you want to get an amazing history of Butte...
Butte America will be broadcast on PBS on October 20. Amazing documentary on the history, the people, and of course...the mining. Highly recommend it.

[Amberenergy]

Hi quinnsmum, i meant Missoula was cheaper than Bozeman...I heard they had more jobs. I'm sorry about your experience, things are tough all over right now. When we were first moving here, I looked for housing in Missoula and it was waaaay cheaper than Bozeman.
However it still might not fit the category of affordable....Missoula has about twice our population so there's more opportunity there.
Also so the op knows, it snowed yesterday...another lovely fact of life in Montana!

[mamakah]

my dp is from butte, I'm from Missoula. I would never move to butte for the reasons stated above. It seems that there is a lot of sickness in Butte. I don't want to get flamed for this,and I mean no offense to those from Butte, but since I met DP, the amount of sick people that I have met has gone up. HIs mom has brain tumors, his nephew died from his brain tumor at 6 yrs old, his neice has nueroblastoma since she was 12 months old, his 28 yr old friend just died of cancer. I agree with the poster that said that Butte is friendly. It's very friendly. I just think that it is toxic. My DP tells me about "acid lake" a lake that doesn't freeze and is the color of mountain dew. Not exactly the picture of beautiful Montana that we all love.
Missoula is more open to the AP lifestyle. It's known as the "hippy town" of Montana. I also agree with pp when they say its expensive to live vs. the money that you can make there. It's tough to find a good paying job imo. They have a GREAT natural food store there called "The Good Food Store".
I've also lived in Bozeman and have mixed feelings about it. It's very very expensive, but beautiful and somewhat progressive. I think it would be easier to find support for you AP choices there too.

[Cetan Luta]

We really like Bozeman, and find it just takes awhile to hunt out the cheap places to live, and the jobs. The nature in the surrounding areas is soo beautiful, the energy seems pretty nice and crunchy. I hear Missoula is nice too. Dillon has absolutely NO JOBS, and little crunchiness, after living there for a year, I would not recomend it to anyone unless they have their finances covered without work and just want to be in the middle of nowhere. Butte has some pretty yuck energy and pollution from all the mining. Montana is very beautiful and VERY cold. If you need work, definately stick to the bigger towns. HTH Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention Billings has lots of oil refineries and literally reeks from it YUCK, I do not recommend it for earthy people.

[mt_gooseberry]

Originally Posted by Cetan Luta

We really like Bozeman, and find it just takes awhile to hunt out the cheap places to live, and the jobs. The nature in the surrounding areas is soo beautiful, the energy seems pretty nice and crunchy. I hear Missoula is nice too. Dillon has absolutely NO JOBS, and little crunchiness, after living there for a year, I would not recomend it to anyone unless they have their finances covered without work and just want to be in the middle of nowhere. Butte has some pretty yuck energy and pollution from all the mining. Montana is very beautiful and VERY cold. If you need work, definately stick to the bigger towns. HTH Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention Billings has lots of oil refineries and literally reeks from it YUCK, I do not recommend it for earthy people.

Some thoughts from a native Montanan: Missoula and Bozeman are probably the crunchiest towns in MT, although the Kalispell complex is pretty crunchy and Helena has a strong crunch element. Missoula has a real hippie rep, Bozeman a snobby rep. Having spent lots of time in both towns I have to tentatively agree. I love Butte, it has an AWESOME history, but you have to appreciate its blue-collar grittiness, and it is severly damaged environmentally. Dillon is a conservative ranching community but it does have a definite liberal element, thanks to the university. Incidentally, that is where I went to college. Billings does reek and doesn't have a very happy vibe. As for the middle of nowhere, that is why Montana rocks! It makes it possible to raise free-range kids!

[Turquesa]

I don't want to overplug my little town lest it get too crowded , but don't overlook Helena. They have a large natural foods store and, like a PP said, growing crunch element. (The Feathered Pipe Ranch is just a few minutes out of town). Housing is not *as* affordable as it is in Butte, but it's worth it to avoid the questionable water and soil. If you're from MN, our brutal, subzero winters will be nothing new to you. I'm hoping to move back some day.

ETA: Feel free to PM me if you'd like more into.

[riomidwife]

We were in Butte this weekend for the Folk Festival and found it to be quite a change -- a good one -- from the Bozeman we moved to six months ago. I am from the east coast and Butte actually reminded me a lot of the older towns there. First thing I liked about it was the terrain, it is set into a hillside with some good elevation, and that was refreshing for me. It is obviously a very working class place, also refreshing, but remnants if its glory days are all around town in the old downtown buildings. You can almost imagine it as a thriving art colony or music scene, if it were in another state and/or didn't have the mine issue.

The mine is an issue, and like others have said I would worry about the toxic load there, and that would probably keep me from investigating it further (we'd like to get out of Bozeman). The pit in town with the surrounding stripped mountain is kind of an ugly scar. Butte has an incredible social and political history, you should google it. At one point it was like "Chicago of the West" with some 60,000+ residents. It still retains much ethnic diversity, which is uncharacteristic of the state as a whole.

A midwife friend of mine used to attend births in Butte when she lived in Helena and encouraged me to check it out as a place to practice.
You're probably not going to see nursing toddlers in public, or many overt displays of crunchiness, but I do think Butte has something going on that is worth checking out.