A writer in Bozeman, Montana, grapples with the influx of wealthy newcomers gentrifying the town she moved to ten years ago—as a bum chasing the Western dream
I don’t remember thinking Bozeman was particularly trendy when I moved here in 2012.

I was drawn to the place because of its cheap rent, its proximity to my seasonal guiding gig, and major mountain peaks than the peaks in the northeast, where I will be coming from.

We crammed three people into a cramped two-bedroom apartment, and I paid my portion of the $265 rent entirely from barista tips.

As far as I know, any notable money in the area goes to Big Sky and the spooky specter of the Yellowstone Club – in the real world, Bozeman is affordable for those living on coffee shop salary and occasional dog-sitting gig. The town feels compact but never stuffy: Montana State University and local businesses are surrounded by vast grasslands that stretch to the foothills before rising into visible mountains from the city center. Hit TV shows about the area didn’t yet exist, and no one could have predicted that a global pandemic would accelerate the bloated expansion of a town I’d accidentally landed on .

I felt like a harmless cog in a community of aspiring college graduates looking for accessible climbing, biking, and hiking. What I didn’t expect was that our seemingly modest presence was changing the culture and landscape, transforming Bozeman from a town of ranches, dirt roads and classic eateries into an attractive destination with a large REI, many sushi restaurants and nearly a dozen local breweries
Now, it’s changed again. A new wave of remote workers, wealthy second-home owners and urban dwellers looking to escape stifling city life during COVID-19 has swept into the valley, buying homes above asking price and exempt from inspection.
Today, within five minutes of home, I can buy an $18 CBD smoothie, Botox, and a cocktail. There’s a Lululemon on Main Street, and it seems like every new restaurant name has a feud with vowels. McMansions dot the foothills with man-made ponds dug into acres of non-native grasses—a devastating blow to the drought-stricken landscape. Rents for two-bedroom “luxury” apartments in Bozeman currently range from $1,400 to $2,400, and the average price for a single-family home is $800,000. Core community members left because of cultural changes or high prices or both.
My instinct is to criticize this latest generation of transplants—incredibly wealthy and full of media-fueled romanticizations of Montana—but my antipathy comes with an asterisk. I’m also a transplant, and no matter how long I stay here, I will never be from Montana. How many years do I have to live in a place before I can lament the cultural change and heartbreaking pace of development? Can I answer the question who deserves to live in the West? Being a resident and watching these changes unfold in real time makes the answer even less clear.

I’m not the only one thinking about this. In fact, the most-watched show in the country is about similar tensions playing out in a fictional version of the area around Bozeman. The Paramount Network show Yellowstone takes a conservative stance on the influx of wealth, the coastal migrations to Montana. In the show, the Duttons, an old ranching family, fight to protect their land from soulless developers. It’s true that the Dutton family’s situation – which owns the largest ranch in America and feels threatened by a developer who wants a piece of it – is very different from the situation of standard Bozeman residents paying the price for two bedroom apartment. But the stress of the program is tolerable.