Moving from Calif to Missoula (Lolo, Boulder: sales, house, employment)

[General Patton]

Hello Everyone,
My family and I have been considering moving from Calif to Missoula or Lolo, Mt.
We are looking for a place to finish raising our children and to retire. I still have 11 yrs to go for retirement and will need to work until that time so will my wife. I have been through Missoula and Lolo some yrs ago when I was a truck driver.
Calif has become run-away with illegals and gangs. The state is going broke in part because of it. The schools are in shambles and gang activity is rampant. Schools here have full-time sheriff deputies on campus at the Jr. High and High Schools whenever school is in session. I have had it with Calif.

I would appreciate all opinions, good/bad/or otherwise.
Thanks!

[Born&raisedMT]

I was born and raised in Montana, and we have our share of problems- poverty, low wages, high unemployment etc etc. Missoula is a great town to be near if you can afford the land/housing prices. Native Montanans are having a harder time finding property they can afford due to the wage/price of living gap. Lolo is a pretty small town though... in a beautiful area. If you are from a populated, warm area, be sure to prepare yourself for some major culture shock. Good luck.

[truckingbronco]

I went to college in Missoula and really enjoyed. Unfortunately, it has limited employment opportunities so I had to move. Is there any specific info you're looking for?

Be warned, it seems everyone in MT has an opinion about Missoula, so don't put too much stock into what you hear and come see for yourself.

[Interpol76]

Missoula is pretty cool for the most part. Definately (in my opinion) the place to be in the Rockies (along with Boulder). Wages are VERY low there though. No Sales tax (at least when I lived there) which sorta makes up for it. And, as truckingbronco mentioned, there are very few jobs available outside the service industry. Missoula is safe for the most part. Every now and then you'll here about a body (usually a homeless dude) floating in the river or a crazy man with a gun. People are...ehhhhh..either extremely friendly or extremely mean. Lots of interesting shops and VERY interesting people nonetheless.

[JoeJoeMan]

I recommand take up drive up.............but notice one thing as you drive up...........there are lot of other nice beautifull places to live along the way..there is nothing so wonderfull about montana that you can't find in hundreds of small towns along the route to get here......You'll probably also notice when you drive up (coming up from Calif you'll probably enter the state in the bitterroot or the Rt 90 corridor), that you be driving thru some nice country and small towns, and then shortly after entering MT it will all start to get crowded again and then it turns to sprawl as you get closer the Missoula RT 93 area.............then ask yourself..."is this why I want to move all the way up here"..........my point is that you don't have to move all the way up here to find someplace nice to live and in fact you'd be far better off in other places...especially considering the realestate prices here...and the other problems ever more increasing present associated with urban sprawl and growth.
I move to MT 40 years ago and it now looks like everything I was trying to get away from....and 98 percent of that change happened in the last 5 or 10 years. Which proves how fast something can go wrong. And to add insult to injury........it's SO expensive to buy a house here now.
To watch sprawl and the degeneration of an area like central Calif or the NY metro area is one thing but to watch the rape of such, a once quite and beautifull place, is quite another, I personally find it a tragidy.

[General Patton]

I wanted to thank everyone for the replies. Many parts of Northern Calif and in the Sierra Mountains are just as beautiful as Montana. I want to be out of the state of Calif itself. I understand about the way JoeJoeman and some of the other feel. Watching what was quite and nice turn into housing tracts. I've seen it happen where I now live. In Calif, we've had whole areas closed to the public because some frog of lizzard may not be able to mate because of human noise.

[jimj]

Don't forget to visit both in the middle of summer and the dead of winter (which is around now btw) and remember that winter is very long here so be ready for no sunshine for a while.