Cowboy Point, Montana

Cowboy Point is a tiny community on the other side of Copper Mountain, a good ten mile drive—in good weather—down what the locals sometimes call Desolation Drive and into Marietta.

The community is a mix of old time miners’ families who found the copper kings down in the valley a bit too heavy handed for their tastes back in the 1850s, cowboys and ranchers who’ve worked the land in the Gallatin Range’s smaller and more remote valleys for generations, the usual mountain types who are drawn to far off places, and a few artists and other hermit-minded fancier folk like everywhere in Montana these days.

Marietta is considered “town.” Livingston is the city and Bozeman is the big city, with the university, all those people, and maybe too many transplants from other places for some people’s taste. Cowboy Point has no stoplights but it does boast one elementary school while the older kids are bussed into Marietta, weather permitting. There’s one small but feisty library, a feed store, and the General Store with its selection of conveniences on one side, a diner of sorts in the middle, and a bar on the other side over the creek. Not long ago, some folks opened up a pizza and ice cream sort of place across the road, and sometimes there’s live, local music to go along with the family-friendly atmosphere. There’s even the old Cowboy Point Lodge, the Jewel of the Rockies in its days, that has fallen into disrepair since the Stark Boys (now dead or in their 70s) spent their entire lives arguing over who should get to run it. There are also some pop-ups—some coffee and food trucks, a medical clinic open a few days a week, and so on.

Most people either have deep roots here, like the Starks, and therefore a tangled family history to work out. Some have that and a grudge, like the Careys and the Lisles, who have been feuding since day one. Newcomers—meaning anyone who turned up after the early 1900s—might have fewer feuds and less ancient tangles, but one thing they all share is a deep sense of pride and place.

You have to want to live in Cowboy Point. It’s a lot easier to slide on down the mountain into Paradise Valley and live in places with fewer memories and a lot more services.

But once the high mountain air gets a hold of you, not to mention the spectacular views across one of the most beautiful places in all of Montana, you might find it hard to call anywhere else home.