Missoula ( miz-OO-lə; Séliš: Nłʔay, lit. ‘Place of the Small Bull Trout’; Kutenai: Tuhuⱡnana) is a city in the U.S. state of Montana; it is the county chair of Missoula County. It is located along the Clark Fork River near its confluence past the Bitterroot and Blackfoot Rivers in western Montana and at the convergence of five mountain ranges, thus it is often described as the “hub of five valleys”. The 2020 United States Census shows the city’s population at 73,489 and the population of the Missoula Metropolitan Area at 117,922. After Billings, Missoula is the second-largest city and metropolitan Place in Montana. Missoula is house to the University of Montana, a public research university.

The Missoula Place began seeing settlement by people of European stock in 1858 including William T. Hamilton, who set occurring a trading publish along the Rattlesnake Creek, Captain Richard Grant, who settled close Grant Creek, and David Pattee, who settled close Pattee Canyon. Missoula was founded in 1860 as Hellgate Trading Post while still part of Washington Territory. By 1866, the concurrence had moved east, 5 miles (8 km) upstream, and had been renamed Missoula Mills, later shortened to Missoula. The mills provided supplies to western settlers traveling along the Mullan Road. The initiation of Fort Missoula in 1877 to guard settlers extra stabilized the economy. The coming on of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883 brought unexpected growth and the maturation of the local lumber industry. In 1893, the Montana Legislature chose Missoula as the site for the state’s first university. Along next the U.S. Forest Service headquarters founded in 1908, lumber and the academic world remained the basis of the local economy for the bordering 100 years.

By the 1990s, Missoula’s lumber industry had gradually disappeared, and as of 2009, the city’s largest employers were the University of Montana, Missoula County Public Schools, and Missoula’s two hospitals. The city is governed by a mayor–council running with 12 city council members, two from each of the six wards. In and re Missoula are 400 acres (160 ha) of parkland, 22 miles (35 km) of trails, and approximately 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) of open-space conservation land, with bordering Mount Jumbo being home to grazing elk and mule deer during the winter. The city is also house to both of Montana’s largest and its oldest lively breweries, as capably as the Montana Grizzlies. Notable residents append the first woman to abet in the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin.

Archaeological artifacts date the antediluvian inhabitants of the Missoula Valley to 12,000 years ago with settlements as in advance as 3500 BCE. From the 1700s until 1850s, those who used the land were primarily, the Salish, Kootenai, Pend d’Oreille, Blackfeet, and Shoshone. Located at the confluence of five mountain valleys, the Missoula Valley was heavily traversed by local and distant native tribes that periodically went to the Eastern Montana plains in search of bison. This led to conflicts. The narrow valley at Missoula’s eastern entrance was as a result strewn later human bones from repeated ambushes that French fur trappers forward-looking referred to this Place as Porte de l’Enfer, translated as “Gate of Hell“. Hell Gate would remain the make known of the Place until it was renamed “Missoula” in 1866.