MISSOULA — Summer brings holidays and a chance to be outdoors and a new public park held a celebration on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024.
A 420-acre public park opened on Marshall Mountain, and to celebrate a dozen vendors as well as free hot dogs and a scavenger hunt took place to mark the opening.
The park sits on some parts of the old Marshall Mountain ski resort and has both private and public lands.
The project has been in the works for a while with Friends of Marshall Mountain co-chair Jeff Crouch saying that after all of the hard work, he's glad the park is now open for public use.
“It has been an incredible lift by an incredible number of people. Missoula County, Missoula City parks fepartments, my group friends of Marshall Mountain Five Valley Land Trust, Izzy Dog — which were private donors that bought the mountain because cities and counties can't move quickly to buy something like this. So they bought it and held it for two years before the city and county could buy it with open space dollars, Forest Service, Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. Kind of countless people came together to make this happen."
Watching the community come together and celebrate the outdoors and the new park was an emotional one.
“I get chills every time I look out here today, we've done a ton of work to make this a park. But then also just to put today together and it's fair week," Crouch told MTN. "We didn't know if anybody to show up. And I'm seeing hundreds of people have never been here before, clearly. Plus all the mountain bikers that come up and have used this place. And it's pretty incredible."
Crouch also told MTN that this is a dream that has come true for him and so many others.
“I got involved with this because we almost lost this place. And for years, we would sit around the backyard barbecues talk about we should buy Marshall and it never happened and we almost lost it," Crouch said. "And I was like, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure this becomes open for everyone. So to sit here today in celebration of that is pretty mind-blowing."
