Montana: A Contemporary Profile

The late historian and president of Montana State University looks at Montana in the 1990s--people, land, cities, towns, schools, economy, politics and government.
From the book: The sheer size of the place is truly daunting....Think of it this way: Montana is as large as all of New England, with New York, New Jersey, and half of Pennsylvania thrown in for good measure. It is just a bit larger than newly unified Germany, just a bit smaller than Japan.
The enormous size of Montana is accentuated by its paucity of population. In the 1990 census, Montana recorded 799,065 people, which ranked it forty-fourth among the fifty states; by 1994, the estimated population had climbed rapidly to 856,000. When one considers that this total is only slightly larger than that of the city limits of two cities on San Francisco Bay, either San Jose or San Francisco itself, then it is readily obvious why Montana is sometimes called simply a city with very long streets, spread out over the land mass of a nation. Its population density is a remarkably low 5.66 people per square mile. Recalling that the state has an urban majority (52.6%), it becomes even more clear how lightly populated the great land mass of Montana actually is.