Montana

A third-grader in Missoula, Montana has successfully rallied her city to build a new bike lane near her busy street.

When Borton and Welsh found 90 acres bordering a national forest near Whitehall, Montana, they parked a trailer, dug in, and began building Sage Mountain Center, a combination of cordwood and straw bale, powered off-grid by the sun and wind.

Montana is flush with wind power capacity and the state's governor wants $15 billion in federal funding to build the infrastructure to transmit it. But some worry the proposed grid would also expand coal-based energy production.

A deal between a Montana timber company and conservationists to preserve 320,000 acres of forest is the largest land conservation in U.S. history.

Gallatin County, Montana, has experienced 20 percent population growth over the last eight years, and officials are hoping that the adoption of smart growth principles will help guide the rapidly developing area towards a sustainable future.

The population shift from rural to urban areas is making big changes in the Great Plains. While many rural small towns are disappearing, the shift is opening new doors for business and preservation.

Writer–on-the-Range Alan Kesselheim describes the most hazardous activity in Montana -- driving, with a particular focus on Hwy 191 through Gallatin Canyon. Every western state has a similar, hazardous route.

A new vision of development in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming is taking shape.

Community activists and designers have made a deal with local officials to reuse construction materials from a demolished fire station to build an amphitheater in a local park.

Open space in Flathead County, Montana, has been steadily decreasing for years, and a recently approved growth policy emphasizes development and the economic benefits that follow rather than farmland preservation.

The state legislature is moving to place explicit limits on local government's power to take private land in response to the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo ruling.

Motels fill a critical housing niche in Montana's booming mountain resort region known as "Big Sky" outside Yellowstone Park: they house area workers as well as guests. While the rooms are shared to reduce costs, dangerous commuting is eliminated.

A new guide helps citizens to identify the differences between good and bad subdivisions in Monanta.

Once unthinkable, zoning is now being considered by Montana counties to prevent subdividing open space and ranch land.

Report by Seattle-based Sightline Institute documents a growing backlash against "property rights" initiatives in Oregon communities deeply affected by Oregon's Measure 37 and implications for western states.

A series of articles and reports addressing growth in the Western United States, including Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Idaho and other states.