It’s safe to say that Missoula, a town of 90,000, is undisputably the cultural capital of Montana. Big-name headliners are always coming through, and it seems like mainstream acts put Missoula on their tour schedules as a matter of habit.  The summer brings a paradisical blend of music, festivals, farmers markets, floating on the Clark Fork River (which runs through the middle of the city), barbecues, and craft beer drinking.  The people of Missoula are the friendliest and most open-minded of any Montana locale, and they do indeed live up to the bumper stickers seen around town that read “Keep Missoula Weird.”  Yeah, it’s one of those places.

One of the unexpected quarks of Missoula is that despite the “artsy” identity that many give to the city, it also hosts one of the top Division 1 FCS football programs in the country.  For six or seven Saturdays every fall, everything seems to shut down as 22,000 maroon-clad fans stream into Washington-Grizzly Stadium to watch their team, in all likelihood, win.  The university also boasts top programs in writing, forestry, and psychology and draws intelligentsia from around the world

Local Information:

Visitor Information:

• Missoula Chamber of Commerce

• Missoula Visitor Bureau

• City of Missoula

• Missoula County

• The University of Montana

• UM - College of Technology

• Missoula Job Service