Helena and Missoula, Montana

After only three days at home, most of it helping my mother at a transitional care unit after a hospital stay, we traveled to Northwestern Montana for our niece Niky’s wedding. Everything went smoothly on our afternoon flight from the Twin Cities to Missoula, and we quickly had our luggage and rental car, checked in to our motel, then drove 115 miles east to Helena, the state capital and seat of Lewis and Clark County. The indigenous Folsom people lived here more than 10,000 years ago, while the first Europeans were residents of an 1864 gold mining camp, many of whom prospered during Montana’s gold rush. Originally called Last Chance Gulch, the growing community was renamed Helena, in honor of Helena Township in Scott County, Minnesota, where many early settlers had come from. Today the city of 32,000—the fifth smallest state capital—still produces gold, silver and minerals, with government, healthcare and outdoor recreation contributing significantly to the economy. We arrived in Helena around 6:00 PM, and the capitol was closed for the day and undergoing major renovations to its exterior, making our selfie a bit disappointing. We did a walk-by of the beautiful Saint Helena Cathedral, modeled after the Votivkirche in Vienna, Austria, then ate dinner outside at Old Salt Outpost, near Last Chance Gulch Road, where the original gold strike was discovered. Map link: Helena, MT. We drove back towards the setting sun to Missoula, where we picked up Amy at the airport and spent the night. 

Bonus Question: Without blank tiles or bonuses, what are the highest scoring two-letter words in Scrabble? (two possible answers, see end of post)

Missoula, population 75,000, is Montana’s second largest city (Billings is the biggest), and lies on the Clark Fork River near the confluence of the Blackfoot and Bitterroot Rivers. Lewis and Clark passed through here in 1805 and 1806, but the area wasn’t settled by Europeans until a trading post was established in 1860; called Hell Gate Village, after nearby Hellgate Canyon. In 1865, while still part of the Washington Territory, it was renamed Missoula Mills, after the dominant flour and lumber milling operation—“Missoula” was the Salish name for the Clark Fork River and Mills was eventually dropped. Unlike Helena, it was never a gold rush boom town, and gained steadily, until the arrival of the Great Northern Railroad in 1883 accelerated growth. In 1893, the University of Montana was founded here, in a compromise agreement that awarded the capital to rival Helena. Norman Maclean’s 1976 semi-autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It was set in and around Missoula, as was the 1992 Academy Award winning film adaptation directed by Robert Redford. 

We took a short driving tour around Missoula, stopping at the attractive university campus and enjoying the city’s beautiful scenery—I couldn’t help thinking that much of it remained unchanged and we saw exactly what Lewis, Clark, Maclean and Redford did. 

The University of Montana. Source: umt.edu

Bonus Question Answer: ZA, slang for pizza, and QI, a Chinese life force, are both worth 11 points in Scrabble.