The narrow valley at Missoula's eastern entrance was so strewn with human bones from repeated ambushes that French fur trappers later referred to this area as Porte de l'Enfer, translated as "Gate of Hell".

When they stayed there again, on their return in June–July 1806, Clark left heading south along the Bitterroot River and Lewis traveled north, then east, through Hellgate Canyon.

Growth accelerated with the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883, and by charter, Missoula incorporated a municipal government as a town, the same year.

[31] In 1987, BN decided to lease, for an initial term of 60 years, the ex-NP route to entrepreneur Dennis Washington, who formed Montana Rail Link.

During the winter, rapid snowmelt on Mount Jumbo due to its steep slope leaves grass available for grazing elk and mule deer.

Native riparian plant life includes sandbar willows and cottonwoods, with Montana's state tree, the ponderosa pine, also being prevalent.

Missoula began as a trading post in the 1860s situated along the Mullan Military Road to take advantage of the first route across the Bitterroot Mountains to the plains of Eastern Washington.

[76][77] The longest-standing event downtown has been the Missoula Farmers Market that was founded in 1972,[78] which provides an outlet for Western Montana produce on Saturday mornings from May to October as well as Tuesday evenings from July to early September.

[102] Missoula plays host to a variety of intercollegiate, youth, and amateur sports organizations in addition to a minor league baseball team.

The Grizzlies men's and Lady Griz basketball teams have also been successful at the conference level, where they both rank at or near the top in attendance, about 4,000 and 3,000, respectively, and play their home games at Dahlberg Arena.

Before the reclamation, the Clark Fork River divided to create an island with the north channel's bank extending to nearby buildings such as the Wilma Theatre.

In 2011, the Montana legislature, with a Republican House majority, attempted to overturn Missoula's marijuana law and revoke its ability to have an anti-discrimination ordinance that included the LGBT community.

[134] The Montana Legislature and Governor Greg Gianforte blocked this decision the following year, repealing the sales tax provision from state law.

[162] In 2015, the City of Missoula was legally granted its "'right to acquire' the water system by exercising its power of eminent domain",[163] but as of June 2017[update] the decision was upheld by a district court.

In the mid-1860s, C. P. Higgins and Frank Worden began plotting what would become the town of Missoula along the Mullan Military Road, which ran parallel to the Clark Fork River.

Attorneys W. M. Bickford and W. J. Stephens had already laid out plots of land five years earlier for what they hoped would be a new town of "South Missoula".

The north side of Missoula became isolated between the Interstate and the tracks while the Greenough Mansion was moved to a South Hills golf course and converted to a restaurant.

The Missoula Downtown Master Plan of 2009 emphasized redevelopment of the North Side's former rail yard and the area just south of the tracks.

The heart of the Missoula Commuter Bike Network is the trails along either side of the Clark Fork River that link Downtown with surrounding neighborhoods, the university, city parks, and outlying open space with smooth surfaces and three bicycle/pedestrian bridges.

[173] Interstate 90 runs east–west along the northern edge of Missoula at the base of the North Hills, with all but a small portion of the city located south of the highway.

[174] U.S. 93 serves as a major economic corridor for western Montana, connecting Missoula with the Bitterroot Valley communities to the south and Flathead Lake, Kalispell, and Glacier National Park to the north.

[180] As of January 2015[update] a three-year pilot program of zero-fare transportation on all Mountain Line buses began, with the goal of increasing ridership by 45 percent.

Intercity rail travel was available from 1883, when the Northern Pacific Railway began service through Missoula, until 1979 when Amtrak discontinued its North Coast Hiawatha route across southern Montana.

[183] In 2009, the Missoula metropolitan statistical area (MSA) ranked as the fifth highest in the United States for percentage of commuters who biked to work (5 percent).

[184] In 2013, the Missoula MSA ranked as the tenth lowest in the United States for percentage of workers who commuted by private automobile (77.2 percent).

Noted athletes who were born or resided in Missoula include five Olympic medalists, Pro Football Hall of Fame Quarterback John Elway,[189] and former Milwaukee Bucks coach Larry Krystkowiak.

[190] Filmmaker David Lynch,[191] actor Dana Carvey,[192] and award-winning biologist Leroy Hood[193] were born in Missoula, while Carroll O'Connor[194] and J. K. Simmons[195] attended the University of Montana.

Academically, Missoula has been home to Nobel Prize winners Harold C. Urey[199] and Steve Running[200] as well as 20th century Montana historian K. Ross Toole.

[201] Noted names in literature include Native American poet James Welch,[202] crime novelist James Crumley,[203] former head of the University of Montana's Creative Writing Program Richard Hugo,[204] William Kittredge, a western writer and professor of creative writing at the University of Montana at Missoula, and Norman Maclean,[205] whose A River Runs Through It chronicles his life in early 20th-century Missoula.

There is a lengthy study of Missoula in the title essay of British writer Jonathan Raban's Driving Home: An American Journey: despite writing that on his arrival, "I had the powerful impression that I had driven deep into the Rocky Mountains and somehow arrived in Rotherham or Barnsley,"[222] and that "the overall effect [of the city] was oddly unsettling; the streets too open for comfort, the town too closed in, inducing mild claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time",[222] he notes the literary heritage of the city and its reputation as a "kindly town" (evidenced by its being a place where "odds and ends naturally collected and cohered").