- [Briggs] What is going on, everyone?
Are you tired of the rat race?
Wanna find a rural town
you could buy a home or rent a place?
Today, we're looking at rural towns in Montana.
We did a video last week about great rural towns to retire
or live as a remote worker across the United States.
And we got a bunch of people asking if we would expand
and do it by state instead of the whole country.
So here we are.
These towns are good for people who are retired,
they can work from home,
they're living on a structured settlement
or some other form of income.
These rural towns rarely have jobs.
So you better bring one with you
or you better not need one.
That whole structured settlement,
mesothelioma cancer lawyer thing
in the first video still cracks me up.
Everyone got a bunch of ads for that.
That is funny.
I don't pick the ads, okay?
And I'm not sure my target audience
are people that were exposed to asbestos or something.
I don't know.
Anyway, moving on.
With the towns on this video,
we're looking for that sweet spot,
a decent place to live that isn't close to major cities
and not so far away that a trip to the hospital
is like a 10 hour adventure.
In the last video, I explained
that not all states have 10 good rural towns.
And I don't wanna waste your time
with some places that aren't worthy of a list,
because of prime, no healthcare,
no internet, something like that.
Montana has great cities and suburbs,
but when it comes to good rural towns, they got seven.
Let's see what they are.
(static buzz)
Number seven, Roundup, Montana.
Roundup, Montana is a small town
of almost 2000 residents
that sits on the Musselshell River.
They got a golf course and an airstrip.
Roundup is a good place to live
for people that wanna be away from other people.
They've got 2,000 people,
but they're an hour away from every place else.
Roundup and the area around here
is beautiful in its own way.
I've gotten many comments in the past
whenever I'm talking about
how beautiful Montana or Wyoming are.
People are, "That's not beautiful.
What? It's like desert stuff."
Well, they're not really desert.
And they're definitely not like New England
where you get to see the leaves change color
during the fall and all that stuff.
They've got their own type of beauty
and some people really appreciate it.
This is in the western United States.
You got a lot of dusty land and a lot of good people.
If you watch my videos,
you know I like to look at the local news
to get an idea past the stats
of what's going on for, you know,
crime and things like that.
So I looked up Roundup, Montana
to see what's going on in the news there.
Nothing major.
I mean, there's no drug busts or home invasions.
They're talking about girls' high school basketball
and a fire that happened at Asparagus Point.
If that's what the town's interested in
and that's what's going on, you got a pretty safe place.
When it comes to healthcare,
you have a small medical center in town
called Roundup Memorial Healthcare.
If you need anything beyond what they have,
like a specialist or whatever,
you're gonna have to go to Billings,
and that's about an hour away.
But the Roundup Memorial Healthcare place,
I was looking at it on the map,
it looks like a middle school.
Not saying they're doing a bad job,
it just looks like a middle school.
So healthcare here gets a thumbs up.
When it comes to crime, Roundup is doing great.
Their crime rate is actually 45% lower
than the national average.
Their violent crime rate is 75% lower
than the national average.
So they get a thumbs up there too.
If you wanna buy a house here in Roundup,
you're looking at about $220,000 or less,
and you'll get a livable home.
It's not gonna be anything terribly exciting,
but you're getting a home for under 220,000.
You go outside of town, you can get homes for like 600,000
that come with like 10 to 20 acres of land.
When you look at the internet here,
they got one company that seems pretty good.
They're called Mid-Rivers Communication.
They have fiber and they have DSL out there.
Only about 50% of the town has fiber,
but that changes all the time as they add more lines.
And you can get one gig with their fiber.
99.9% of the town gets DSL,
and that's only 12 megabytes per second.
So make sure you know what you're getting into,
and call them if you'd need high speed internet
and you wanna buy a house here.
(static buzz)
Number six, Townsend, Montana.
Townsend is a small town of around 2,000 residents
on the Missouri River.
In case you don't know,
this is where the Missouri River starts,
not too far from here.
I think it should be the Montana River.
I mean, it starts here.
Every time I call Washington DC
to voice my opinion on this, they hang up on me.
Statistically, Townsend is a great place to live.
It's even a water tower town.
That's what I call towns that have the water towers
with their name painted on it.
I love those for some reason.
Townsend has a medical center and a medical clinic.
If you need anything beyond what they offer,
you're gonna be looking at an hour's drive south to Bozeman.
So they get a faded thumbs up
when it comes to healthcare.
When it comes to housing,
you don't have much to choose from right now.
They do have one home for sale in town
that goes for about $350,000.
And they got a really nice one outside of town
that comes with six acres,
and that's going for about 700,000.
But I get the vibe that
if you wanna buy anything in this area,
you're looking at over 300,000.
When it comes to internet, again,
they're a little so-so.
They have CenturyLink that covers about 65% of the town
with 100 megabits per second.
And Spectrum covers about 20% of the town
with 100 megabytes per percent.
Everyone else can get Montana Internet,
and they got DSL, it's only 7 megabytes per second.
So that kinda sucks, but at least you get internet.
Now keep in mind, internet speeds change all the time.
Don't climb up my butt in the comment section
three years from now,
because Montana Internet now offers 50 megabytes per second.
So the internet in Townsend,
also another faded thumbs up.
Crime is where Townsend shines.
They don't have much of it.
The crime rate in Townsend is 60% lower
than the national average.
Their violent crime rate is about 55% lower
than the national average.
So they get a big thumbs up there.
(static buzz)
Number five, Big Timber, Montana.
Big Timber is a small town of almost 1,700 residents
on the Yellowstone River.
This is a great place to be if you like to fish.
Besides the Yellowstone River,
it branches out to the Boulder River
and fly fishing is a big deal in Big Timber.
This is a great place if you like the outdoors.
You got the fishing, you got mountains nearby,
plenty of hiking, camping, all that good stuff.
Interesting fact about Big Timber,
it takes its name from the Big Timber Creek,
which was named by William Clark of Lewis and Clark,
because of the large cottonwood trees they had there.
So when a town sprung up, they thought,
"Hey, why not Big Timber?"
And when it comes to healthcare,
they got the Pioneer Medical Center,
which looks like it's kinda big for such a small town.
So that's good.
Anything beyond what they got for you,
you gotta head into Billings about an hour to the east.
This is a cheap place to live.
Their cost of living's actually 15% lower
than the national average.
The crime rate's even lower.
It's actually 57% below the national average.
They get a giant thumbs up for that one.
And the housing, like every place in Montana,
it's all over the map.
You have one right now that looks decent for about 250,000.
After that, you're looking at homes over 500,000
that come with an acre or more.
So they get a faded thumbs up for this one.
As far as the internet speeds,
Spectrum covers about 70% of the homes
and you can get gig internet there.
About 80% of the homes can get 500 megabytes
from someone called Triangle Communications.
So they get a thumbs up there too.
(static buzz)
Number four, Hungry Horse, Montana.
Hungry Horse. I just love the name.
Hungry Horse is an unincorporated community,
so it's not technically a town,
but 700 people live there.
The town sprung up during the construction
of the Hungry Horse Dam
when the US government placed
over 100 prefabricated buildings
at the site to house the workers.
That in the mid '40s.
In 1948, a Flathead County commissioner decided
that they didn't have the greatest name in the world.
Everyone called it Dam Town.
He changed it to Hungry Horse.
The name comes from a local legend
about two horses named Tex and Jerry.
They almost starved to death in deep snow
along the south fork of the Flathead River.
This is a great place to live.
It's cheap, and it's close to everything outdoors,
including Glacier National Park.
But if you do decide to move here,
every single year you run the risk of getting snowed in.
It gets cold and it gets snowy here.
Now, they don't have any healthcare in town,
but about five or 10 minutes away in Columbia Falls,
they have some doctors there.
And about 20 minutes away in Whitefish, Montana,
they have a hospital.
So they get a faded thumb up for their healthcare here.
When it comes to homes, there's nothing for sale right now,
but in the last year or so,
they've sold few houses
and they always seem to be going
for somewhere around $450,000
and they come with at least a half an acre or something.
So they get kind of a faded thumbs up for this one.
When it comes to crime,
yeah, Hungry Horse has no crime.
They're actually 75% lower than the national average
and their violent crime rate is unregistered,
meaning they didn't have anything
to put down on the report.
When you look at their internet, it's so-so.
You get 50 megabytes per second from CenturyLink
and they cover about 80% of the town
or census designated area.
The real reason this one gets on the list
is for the people that love the outdoors.
This a great place for that.
I mean, you got Whitefish, who's later on in this list,
right down the road,
like I said, Glacier National Park.
A lot of people will buy homes in this area
or plots of land and they'll park their RV on it,
and then pick up and go and come back,
use it sort of like a home base.
(static buzz)
Number three, Lewistown, Montana.
Lewistown is a town of about 6,000 residents,
smack dab in the middle of the state.
And that is one of two scheduled smacked dabs
for this video.
Lewistown is one of the only towns on this list
that doesn't have a big river flowing by it.
They have a couple creeks.
One of 'em's called the Big Spring Creek,
but it's still just a creek.
This little town also has two golf courses.
One's only a nine-hole golf course,
but still, it's golf, right?
You might be able to get to golf a little more in the season
than you would at some of the other places,
because this isn't out in the mountains
where it's gonna snow, like five months out of the year.
Lewistown does have a really low-cost living.
It's actually 20% lower than the national average,
which is really good, especially if you're retiring.
Their crime rate is 53% lower than the national average.
So they get a big thumbs up for that one.
When it comes to healthcare,
you've got some options here.
You have the Central Montana Medical Center,
which is on the west side of town.
On the east side of town,
you have a Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic,
which is good for you veterans out there.
Then they have doctors' offices
spread out throughout the town.
Most of the time, when you have little small towns
like this, that's only 6,000 people,
you might have one or two.
I counted at least five.
If you need anything past what they got,
you got about a two hour ride to Billings.
They do have a helipad.
So if it's serious,
you might get a helicopter ride out of it.
When it comes to housing, right now, you got three choices.
They got one that's going for about $229,000
and it looks like could use a little remodeling.
Doesn't look terrible.
I mean, it's a little outdated,
1970s furniture and drapes and everything like that,
but it could be turned around.
They got another one that's probably
gonna need a little help, and that's 168,000.
And then they have another one going for $57,000
that I would say just needs a bulldozer.
But judging by what's been sold here
in the last couple years,
you're probably looking at a little under 300,000
to get something decent and livable.
When it comes to internet,
the only real option you have here
is CenturyLink, and it's DSL,
and you're gonna get about 50 megs.
So that's good enough for most people.
But if you're in a business,
like let's say what I do,
I need much faster than that.
So this would be a no-go for me.
So their internet gets a faded thumbs up.
(static buzz)
Number two, Deer Lodge, Montana.
Deer Lodge started out as a rail town
on the Clark Fork River.
These days, it's better known
as the home of the Montana State Prison,
which is a big local employer.
They also have the old Montana State Prison
smack dab in town.
You can take tours of that one.
Deer Lodge is surrounded by farmland
and mountains and beautiful scenery.
I was looking up news of the area to see what's going on,
and one of the headlines kinda got me,
and it's kinda sad.
They're missing a man, but it said, "Anaconda Man Missing."
I'm all, "Is this a superhero?"
But apparently Anaconda is a town
down the road from Deer Lodge.
But that's what it said, "Anaconda Man Missing."
But all joking aside, I hope they find the guy.
His people seem worried.
When it comes to healthcare in Deer Lodge,
you got the Deer Lodge Medical Center.
Anything more, you got about an hour drive to Missoula
or two hours to Bozeman.
So they get a thumbs up for their healthcare.
When it comes to crime, they don't have much of it.
Their crime rate's actually 74% lower
than the national average, which is great.
So they get a thumbs up there.
And when it comes to housing,
they don't have a lot for sale,
but most older homes here might need a little work
and they're gonna be around 250, $275,000.
They do have a lot that come with acres
and those get up in the seven and 800,000 area.
But you get an older house that you might need
to do little work for around 250, $275,000.
When it comes to internet, they're a really good shape here.
You got Spectrum gives 1 gig for about 86% of the town.
Then CenturyLink is here with 20 megabits per second,
and they cover 89% of the town.
So they get a thumbs up for that one.
All right, before we get to number one,
don't forget, we have another channel called On this Day.
There is a link down below.
You can go by there, check it out.
We do videos about historical events
that have happened on the dates.
All right, on to number one.
(static buzz)
And number one, Whitefish, Montana.
Whitefish is a great place to live if you can afford it.
That's the big knock for this one, it's expensive.
But it's beautiful and it's a really nice place to live.
The cost of living is actually 25% higher
than the national average, in Whitefish.
Whitefish, Montana sits on Whitefish Lake
and has the Whitefish River running right through town.
You got hiking, skiing, everything,
snow, everything outdoors goes on in Whitefish.
They got a bunch of resorts and all kinds of good stuff.
And it's not too far from Hungry Horse.
Now the downtown part,
or I guess you could say the main part of Whitefish,
is a resort tourist town,
but the outskirts is where I'm talking about,
and that's where people really wanna live.
And that's how they get on a list about country living.
For those of you that are looking for a mountain paradise,
that's kinda what Whitefish is.
It is just amazingly beautiful and it's expensive.
The homes are expensive, the scenery might be worth it
if you've got the money.
Now I'm gonna alarm some of you with these numbers.
Like I said in the last video,
if people couldn't afford these prices,
they wouldn't be these prices, they'd be much lower.
You can occasionally find a home here
for around six to 700,000.
But those are fewer and far between,
and as time goes on, they become even more
of a fewer and far between type thing.
So we'll start off with the house prices first.
Your starting money you need to be looking at
to get a decent place in Whitefish, Montana
is a million dollars.
If you just spit out your drink,
don't even consider it, just go there to Zillow or whatever
and look at some of these houses.
They're beautiful. They're amazing.
Sure, they're unattainable for most of us,
but they're amazing.
While you're looking at 'em,
keep in mind, this video wasn't just
about the cheapest places to move.
We're talking about the best rural towns
to live in or around.
So the home prices kinda give this place a thumbs down,
because it's so fricking expensive.
It's worth it, but it's expensive.
Where they shine are things like their crime rate.
Their crime rate is actually 64% lower
than the national average.
Their schools are graded 20% higher
than the national average,
if you got kids and you're moving there.
And they got great healthcare.
You have the North Valley Hospital
on the south side of town.
On top of that, you got a bunch of doctors
and a bunch of specialists in the area as well.
So most of the town follows the U.S. 93
that goes north to south, from Whitefish Lake on down,
and that's where most of the town and most everything is.
Just outside that, I'd say less than a mile each direction,
is where it gets rural.
And some of the homes out there look like dumps.
You know, they got a bunch of broken down cars in their yard
and just nasty stuff in this beautiful land.
And you're looking at what's going on in Whitefish,
and you know these people with all their broken down cars
are sitting on a gold mine.
It's like, what are you waiting for?
I'm sure people have been offering you money
for a very long time to get out there.
But all in all, in my opinion,
I think Whitefish is one of the best places
to live in Montana if you can afford it.
I like going up there.
I'll take the Amtrak from Portland and go up there.
It's nice.
The Amtrak drops you off like at 8:00, 9:00 in the morning,
just an overnight trip on the train.
It's beautiful too. It's great.
When it comes to internet,
you got CenturyLink that covers about 100% of the town,
and they get you almost to a gig,
where Spectrum covers 83% of the town
and they gets you gig internet.
So internet's covered pretty well here.
(light music)
All right. That's today's video.
Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Hope you got some information out of it.
Now go out, have a great day and be nice to each other.