11 Best Places To Live In The Rockies

The small towns of the Rockies are where the good life still comes cheap. A river disappears into a cave just south of Lander, Wyoming, which throws the country's oldest paid rodeo every Fourth of July. Salmon, Idaho, grew up in the valley where Sacagawea was born, with the River of No Return churning past and a hot spring at the end of a two-mile hike. In Deer Lodge, a cattle ranch older than the state of Montana still works the open range. Every one of these towns comes with an affordable house, a hospital in town, and mountains at the edge of the yard.

Deer Lodge, Montana

The Grant-Kohrs Ranch on the edge of Deer Lodge is a real cattle ranch, worked by real ranch hands, that the National Park Service operates as a museum of the open range. Dozens of original 1860s buildings are open to walk through, and the herd still grazes the valley floor. Deer Lodge itself is a plain, affordable town in southwestern Montana, laid out between the Flint Creek Range and the Continental Divide.

The other landmark downtown is the Old Montana Prison, the territorial lockup, now a museum with an antique car collection inside its walls. Day-to-day and emergency care go through the Deer Lodge Medical Center, and the county's senior programs give older residents a place to land. Cottonwood City Park has the ballfields and picnic ground the town uses once the snow clears in spring.

Craig, Colorado

Craig calls itself the elk hunting capital of the world, and every fall the town brings in hunters after one of the largest migratory elk herds in North America. The rest of the year it is a ranching and former coal town in the northwest corner of Colorado, plain and cheap to live in. The Museum of Northwest Colorado, downtown, has one of the better collections of cowboy and ranching gear in the state.

Memorial Regional Health operates the local hospital and clinics, which matters in a town this remote. Families gather at the Center of Craig for programs through the week, and the West Twin Cinema still shows the latest movies on a couple of screens. Winters are long and cold up here, and residents treat that as the cost of the wide-open space.

Salmon, Idaho

Deep in central Idaho, where the Lemhi River joins the Salmon, lies the town of Salmon, at the edge of the largest wilderness in the lower 48. Sacagawea was born here among the Lemhi Shoshone, and the Sacajawea Center on the east side of town tells that history on the ground where it happened. The Salmon River, the one they call the River of No Return, carries whitewater right past downtown.

Living here means the outdoors is the daily life: steelhead fishing, whitewater trips, and a soak at Goldbug Hot Springs after the two-mile hike up the canyon. Salmon is far from any city, which makes Steele Memorial Medical Center a genuine lifeline for the whole county. Housing is cheaper than in Idaho's resort valleys, and the town is quiet even in summer.

Woodland Park, Colorado

At 8,500 feet on the northwest side of Pikes Peak, Woodland Park has the nickname to match: Gateway to Pikes Peak. The Pike National Forest surrounds the town, so trailheads and campgrounds begin a few minutes from most front doors. On the main highway through town, the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center shows real skeletons and casts dug out of the region.

Colorado Springs lies less than thirty minutes downhill, so Woodland Park works as a cheaper, quieter place to live for people who work in the city. Local care comes from UCHealth Pikes Peak Regional Hospital, with the larger Springs hospitals a short drive down the pass. The elevation means real winter, and the breweries and coffee shops downtown are where people wait it out.

Dillon, Montana

Dillon is a college town, home to the University of Montana Western, whose campus brings a few thousand students and a steady payroll to a small Montana ranching hub. It lies on the Beaverhead River, minutes from the blue-ribbon trout water of the Big Hole. Just north of town, Clark's Lookout State Park marks the bluff Meriwether Lewis climbed to read the river in 1805.

For a town its size, Dillon is well set up: Barrett Hospital and HealthCare gives it a full-service hospital, and housing costs well under what Montana's tourist towns charge. Summers go to the golf course and the riverbank, winters to Big Sky Cinema and the bars downtown. The Beaverhead Valley turns cold for months at a stretch, but the town is built for it.

Hayden, Colorado

Hayden is small enough that people know each other by name, a ranching town in the Yampa Valley of northwest Colorado. The Yampa River State Park follows the river for more than 130 miles, with boat ramps, fishing, and campgrounds strung along it. The Hayden Heritage Center, in the old train depot, lays out the valley's ranching and coal-mining past.

Steamboat Springs and its ski resort are about half an hour east, which means Hayden residents get resort-town jobs and mountain access without the resort-town home prices. There is no hospital in town, so serious care means the drive to Steamboat, a tradeoff locals make for the lower cost and the quiet. The valley spreads wide here, and the winters are cold and bright.

Buena Vista, Colorado

Buena Vista stands at 8,000 feet between the Collegiate Peaks and the Arkansas River, which cuts right through the middle of town. The whitewater park on the river is the largest in Colorado, and the kayak-centric South Main neighborhood grew up around it. Cottonwood and Mount Princeton hot springs are both a short drive out for a soak after a day on the water.

The town is a working outdoor base rather than a polished resort, and homes cost less than in the ski towns an hour north. Monarch Mountain is close enough for winter skiing, and the Collegiate Peaks put a dozen 14,000-foot summits within reach in summer. The nearest full hospital is in Salida, twenty-five minutes south, the usual tradeoff for a town this size.

Salida, Colorado

Salida has the largest National Historic District in Colorado, a downtown of brick storefronts from the railroad days, most of them still in use. The Arkansas River curves through the edge of town, and in June the FIBArk festival, the oldest whitewater race in the country, takes over the water. People call Salida the Heart of the Rockies, and the Sawatch peaks around it make the case.

Artists and river guides have made Salida less of a bargain than it once was, but it is still cheaper than the marquee ski towns, and the downtown is busy year-round. The Salida Hot Springs pool downtown is the town's living room in winter, and Monarch Mountain is a half-hour up the pass for skiing. Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center is the hospital for the whole upper Arkansas valley.

Lander, Wyoming

Six miles outside Lander, the Popo Agie River pours into a limestone cave at Sinks Canyon State Park and comes back up a quarter mile downstream in a pool full of trout. That is the daily backdrop in Lander, a town of about 7,500 at the foot of the Wind River Range. It is the headquarters of the National Outdoor Leadership School, which has trained wilderness guides here since 1965.

Housing costs less than on Wyoming's Jackson Hole side of the mountains, and Lander has a walkable Main Street with a couple of breweries and the old Lander Bar. SageWest Health Care operates a hospital in town, and climbing, fishing, and backpacking all start minutes from downtown. Elk move down into the valley every winter, and the town's rodeo, billed as the oldest paid rodeo in the country, comes around every Fourth of July.

Hamilton, Montana

Hamilton is the biggest town in the Bitterroot Valley, laid out between the Bitterroot Range to the west and the Sapphire Mountains to the east. Just outside town, the Daly Mansion is the 24,000-square-foot summer home the copper baron Marcus Daly built, now open for tours on 50 acres. The Bitterroot River, blue-ribbon trout water for more than 100 miles, threads the length of the valley.

Hamilton is cheaper than the resort side of Montana around Whitefish and Bozeman, and it is close enough to Missoula, about 50 minutes north, for city errands. Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital gives the valley a full hospital, and downtown has the shops, breweries, and the Ravalli County Museum in the old 1900 courthouse. The Bitterroot National Forest starts at the edge of town, and Lost Trail ski area is at the south end of the valley for winter.

Florence, Colorado

Florence had one of the first oil fields in the country back in the 1860s, and the mining and railroad money built the brick downtown that remains. Today the town leans on antiques instead of oil, and it calls itself the antique capital of Colorado, with the storefronts along Main Street to prove it. The Florence Pioneer Museum lays out the mining, railroad, and pioneer history in one stop.

The town lies on the Arkansas River in southern Colorado, and the water is right there for fishing, rafting, and kayaking. Homes cost less than the Colorado average, part of why retirees settle in Florence, and the Florence Senior Community Center offers programs for them. Day-to-day medical needs go to the Florence Medical Center, with larger hospitals up the road in Cañon City and Pueblo.

What the Tradeoff Looks Like

The pattern is the same in all of these towns: cheaper housing and open country in exchange for distance from a city like Denver and a real winter. Dillon and Woodland Park have their own hospitals and a college or a city close by, so the tradeoff is milder there. Buena Vista and towns like it lie farther out, closer to the mountains and farther from the emergency room. What a mover picks comes down to which side of that line they want to live on.