40 Fun Facts About Missoula, Montana

A man-made feature beside Caras Park lets people in landlocked Missoula do which ocean sport downtown?

Surfing draws crowds to Brennan's Wave, built on the river in memory of a Missoula kayaker who died paddling in Chile. Kayakers and paddleboarders share it with the board riders.

In 1897, Buffalo Soldiers stationed at Fort Missoula made a 1,900-mile test trip to St. Louis riding what?

Bicycles carried the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps from Fort Missoula to St. Louis as an Army experiment. The Army decided the machines had limited military use and would never replace the horse.

Which Missoula, Montana, native became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, back in 1916?

Jeannette Rankin won a Montana seat in the House in 1916, before most American women could vote. A lifelong pacifist, she voted against declaring war in both 1917 and 1941.

Missoula schoolchildren collected a million of what to adopt four horses on the downtown carousel?

Pennies, a million of them worth $10,000, paid for four ponies on A Carousel for Missoula. Volunteers hand-carved the horses after a local cabinet maker offered to build the ride if the city gave it a home.

Settlers named Mount Jumbo, above Missoula, because they thought the hill resembled which sleeping animal?

An elephant lying down, its trunk pointing north, is what locals saw in the grassy hill. The name salutes Jumbo, the giant star of P. T. Barnum's circus, by way of a nearby mine called the Jumbo Lode.

Norman Maclean's novella A River Runs Through It made the rivers around Missoula famous for which pastime?

Fly fishing is the family passion in Maclean's story of growing up in Missoula in the early 1900s. Robert Redford's 1992 film version starred a young Brad Pitt.

Which surrealist film director, famous for eerie mysteries set in small towns, was born in Missoula in 1946?

David Lynch was born at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, the son of a federal research scientist. He went on to co-create the television mystery series Twin Peaks.

The airport in Missoula is home to a famous base and visitor center for which elite wildland firefighters?

Smokejumpers, who parachute into remote wildfires, are based at the Aerial Fire Depot beside Missoula's airport. President Eisenhower came to dedicate the depot in 1954.

Which oddly named brown ale from Big Sky Brewing in Missoula became the best-selling beer brewed in Montana?

Moose Drool comes from Big Sky Brewing, which opened in Missoula in 1995 and grew into Montana's largest brewery. The company also built an amphitheater for concerts and charity events.

As built in 1921, the Wilma Theatre in downtown Missoula had which surprising feature in its basement?

A swimming pool called the Crystal Plunge sat beneath the Wilma when it was built. Builder Billy Simons dedicated the theatre to his wife, the light opera artist Edna Wilma.

The horizontal lines on Mount Sentinel above Missoula, Montana, are what kind of natural feature?

Ancient shorelines mark the levels where the vast glacial lake stood about 13,000 years ago. Where the University of Montana campus sits today, the lake was once 950 feet deep.

When its ice dam burst, Glacial Lake Missoula sent floods that carved the Channeled Scablands of which state?

Washington's eastern scablands were scoured about 40 times as the lake drained and refilled over 2,000 years. The torrents ran on down the Columbia River Gorge.

Fans in Missoula pack a 25,000-seat stadium to cheer the University of Montana football team, known as what?

Grizzlies football dates to 1897, and the team won national championships in 1995 and 2001. The bear mascot is called Monte, short for Montana.

Which name is given to the annual football game between Missoula's University of Montana and rival Montana State?

Brawl of the Wild has been the game's advertised name since 1997, though the rivalry began in 1897. The winner keeps the Great Divide Trophy, named because the campuses sit on opposite sides of the continental divide.

Travelers' Rest, near Missoula, is the only campsite with physical proof of which famous expedition's stay?

Lewis and Clark camped at Travelers' Rest in 1805 and again in 1806. A 2002 dig pinned down the camp latrine by its traces of mercury, left by the pills given to sick soldiers.

Missoula is the second most populous city in Montana, behind which city on the Yellowstone River?

Billings is Montana's largest city, well ahead of Missoula, which counted 73,489 residents at the 2020 census.

Missoula, Montana, lies less than 25 miles as the crow flies from the border of which state?

Idaho begins less than 25 miles from Missoula, which sits at Montana's far western edge. By highway, the lakeside resort city of Coeur d'Alene is 165 miles to the northwest.

Which Saturday Night Live comedian, who played Garth in Wayne's World, was born in Missoula, Montana?

Dana Carvey was born in Missoula, the fourth of five children of two schoolteachers. His breakout character on Saturday Night Live was the prim, pious Church Lady.

The name Missoula comes from a Salish name for the local river that roughly translates as a place of what?

Cold or frozen water is the rough sense of nmesuletkw, the Salish name for the river through town. The name has also long been glossed as river of ambush, after the intertribal fighting once common nearby.

The canyon east of Missoula was named Porte de l'Enfer by French fur trappers, meaning the gate of what?

Hell seemed the right word to trappers who found the narrow canyon strewn with bones from repeated ambushes. The 1860 trading post that grew into Missoula took the same grim name.

Which federal agency has run a six-state regional headquarters in Missoula, Montana, since 1908?

Forest Service managers chose Missoula in 1908 because it was both a major lumber producer and a regional trading hub. Timber and the university then anchored the local economy for a century.

The arrival of which transcontinental railroad in 1883 turned Missoula from a town of 500 into a boomtown?

Northern Pacific trains reached Missoula in 1883, when the town had about 500 residents. The line's repair shops brought hundreds of jobs, and its appetite for bridge timber launched the local lumber industry.

Front Street in downtown Missoula follows the line of which pioneering military wagon route over the Rockies?

Mullan Road was the first wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains to the inland Northwest. Missoula began in 1860 as a trading post serving the travelers who used it.

Over 1,200 merchant seamen and World's Fair workers from which country were interned at Fort Missoula in 1941?

Italy's stranded sailors and fair workers nicknamed the camp Bella Vista. They worked on area farms and fought wildfires until they were released in 1944.

Which University of Montana history professor from Missoula later led the U.S. Senate's majority for sixteen years?

Mike Mansfield was Senate majority leader from 1961 to 1977, then spent more than a decade as U.S. ambassador to Japan. As a young man he spent eight years shoveling ore in Montana mines.

Which future Denver Broncos quarterback lived in Missoula as a boy while his father coached at the university?

John Elway spent part of his childhood in Missoula while his father, Jack, was an assistant coach for the Montana football team. He went on to win two straight Super Bowls with Denver.

Bassist Jeff Ament, who studied art at the University of Montana in Missoula, co-founded which Seattle rock band?

Pearl Jam's bassist grew up in Big Sandy, Montana, a town of fewer than 700 people, and played basketball while studying in Missoula. He even suggested naming the band after NBA player Mookie Blaylock.

Which Oscar-winning Whiplash actor graduated from the University of Montana in Missoula with a music degree in 1978?

J. K. Simmons moved to Missoula at 18 when his father became director of the university's School of Music. He won his Academy Award for playing a ferocious jazz instructor.

Which actor, later famous as Archie Bunker, edited the student newspaper at the University of Montana in Missoula?

Carroll O'Connor quit as editor of the Montana Kaimin in 1949, protesting campus pressure that got an issue destroyed over a cartoon mocking the state education board. He took no drama courses but acted in student plays.

The Boone and Crockett Club, headquartered in Missoula, was founded in 1887 by which future U.S. president?

Theodore Roosevelt proposed the club at a dinner in his New York home in December 1887. It is North America's oldest conservation group for game animals and their habitat.

Which animal winters on Mount Jumbo above Missoula and has a national conservation foundation in the city?

Elk graze Mount Jumbo in winter because its steep slope sheds snow quickly, leaving the grass exposed. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation was started in 1984 by four hunters from Troy, Montana.

Maggotfest, held in Missoula, Montana, each May since 1977, is a festival-style tournament in which sport?

Rugby teams from across the United States and Canada come for the non-elimination tournament, which puts fun ahead of trophies. The hosts are a local club called the Missoula Maggots.

Before becoming the PaddleHeads, the baseball team in Missoula was named for which fish-hunting bird?

Osprey was the club's name from 1999 through the 2019 season. The new name plays on paddles, a nickname for broad antlers, and on the paddling done on Missoula's rivers.

The Roxy Theater in Missoula hosts a juried film festival, founded in 1977, devoted to films about what?

Wildlife films got their first regular festival in Missoula, founded by a noted bear biologist who taught at the university. Up to 12,000 people attend the eight-day event.

Palmerston North, the sister city that Missoula honors with a special day each May, is in which country?

New Zealand's Palmerston North became a sister city in 1983, a tie that began when a Missoula resident earned his doctorate at Massey University there.

Which 2018 video game, set in fictional Hope County, names Missoula as the nearest city players try to reach?

Far Cry 5 pits a junior deputy against a doomsday cult that has seized a rural Montana county. An early mission has the player trying to escape toward Missoula.

Which nickname for Missoula, Montana, lives on in the names of a local ballet company and an annual brewfest?

The Garden City name was already in print by 1896, when the local paper was praising Missoula's lawns and rose bushes. Another nickname is Zootown.

Milltown Dam, removed near Missoula, had trapped a century of toxic waste from mining which metal upstream?

Copper mining around Butte and Anaconda sent tons of contaminated sediment downstream in a 1908 flood, when the dam was months old. The cleanup belongs to the country's largest Superfund complex.

Which river, joining the main river just east of Missoula, stars in Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It?

Blackfoot River scenes run through the 1976 novella, yet the 1992 film was not shot there. The river rises at the Continental Divide and ends about five miles east of Missoula.

Missoula author Michael Punke wrote which frontier survival novel, later filmed with Leonardo DiCaprio?

The Revenant was published in 2002, before Punke moved to Missoula and taught part-time at the university. The 2015 film version was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.