Montanans new and old.

• Author: Farr, William E.

Last July, the national magazine Newsweek breathlessly insisted that the West is at war with itself. Maybe elsewhere, but I don't think it is war in Montana--more like a loud and angry family dispute. To be sure, both Montana and the West are big places, thinly populated by comparison with the East, yet filled with a diversity that has cofounded visitors and only grown more pronounced. Nor has there been any agreement but where the West begins or ends, or what should be included. In general, it's hard to generalize.

What is clear--and Newsweek got this right--is that things are changing. Fast and furious in some places. Consider the scope and scale of population growth over the last quarter century in the Rocky Mountain West. Between 1970 and 1994, the US population as a whole grew by 29 percent. Over the same period, Arizona grew by 130 percent, Wyoming by 43 percent. Alone among the Rocky Mountain states, Montana's growth rate sank below the national average--at a piddling 23 percent. We couldn't even save out two congressional seats in the 1980s.

Known as the "empty quarter" of the West, the "Big open," the "great fly-over," Montana is uncommonly spacious. Our population density is 5.6 persons per square mile; only Alaska and Wyoming offer more elbow room. Yet this density figure is deceptive. Some 30 percent of Montana is designated public land, in the form of national parks, wilderness areas, and BLM tracts. Much of the remainder is vertical, and the climate as a whole can be both dry and harsh. So Montana land actually and practically available for private use and growth is, in truth, quite limited.

These factors have contributed to what some call an "oasis" civilization. Other say Montana should be classified as an "urban" state because most people live in cities and towns. These may be apt, but it's well to remember that none of Montana's urban oases 100,000 people, and that 60 percent of the state population clusters in only eight of its counties--seven of which are in Western Montana.

The BBER study on recent statewide migration patterns is reassuring in some ways. According to the study, 40 percent of all movers in the last five years came from elsewhere in the state, and 55 percent of the households moving in from another state had at least one member with prior residence here. This level of familiarity with Montana seems to soften the cultural shock and risk associated with newcomers.

Yet these statewide figures are also...