Frenchtown is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in Missoula County,

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

, United States. It is part of the Missoula metropolitan area. The population was 1,958 as of the 2020 census.

History

Early settlers gave the location a generic name based on the ethnicity or language of the original settlers, namely

French Canadians French Canadians, referred to as Canadiens mainly before the nineteenth century, are an ethnic group descended from French colonists first arriving in France's colony of Canada in 1608. The vast majority of French Canadians live in the provi ...

. The settlement was cofounded around 1858 by two French Canadians moving inland with their

Métis The Métis ( , , , ) are a mixed-race Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They ha ...

families to escape turmoil further west that followed the arrival of the American federal authorities. Jean-Baptiste Ducharme left

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ; ) is a complex estuary, estuarine system of interconnected Marine habitat, marine waterways and basins located on the northwest coast of the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. As a part of the Salish Sea, the sound ...

during the Indian Wars (1855-1856) abandoning his land claim as his

Muck Creek Muck is a stream in the U.S. state of Washington. The name Muck is derived from an old variant name of Roy, Washington. See also *List of rivers of Washington (state) This is a list of rivers in the U.S. state of Washington. By drainage ba ...

neighbors were arrested under martial law. Louis Brown (anglicized name) left the Colville Valley turmoil a few years later with his Pend d'Oreille wife and their daughters. Meanwhile the Kalispel Indian Community had moved upriver to a new locale accompanied by Jesuit priest Father Hoecken, who relocated the Saint-Ignatius mission northeast of the future Frenchtown. The St. Louis Catholic Church was built in 1864. A post office called Frenchtown was first established in 1868.

Geography

Frenchtown is located in northwestern Missoula County on the historic

Mullan Road Mullan Road was the first covered wagon, wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains to the Inland Empire (Pacific Northwest), Inland of the Pacific Northwest. It was built by United States Army, U.S. Army troops under the command of Lt. John Mullan ( ...

Interstate 90 Interstate 90 (I-90) is an east–west transcontinental freeway and the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at . It begins in Seattle, Washington, and travels through the Pacific Northwest, Mountain states, Mountain West, Great Pla ...

now passes through the community, with access from Exit 89. I-90 leads southeast to

Missoula Missoula ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, Missoula County, Montana, United States. It is located along the Clark Fork River near its confluence with the Bitterroot River, Bitterroot and Blackfoot River (Montana), ...

and northwest to Superior. Frenchtown Pond State Park is in the western part of the community. The pond is a popular site for swimming and paddling sports. It offers four-season fishing for bass, perch and hatchery trout. South of town is the

Clark Fork River The Clark Fork, or the Clark Fork of the Columbia River, is a river in the U.S. states of Montana and Idaho, approximately long. It is named after William Clark of the 1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition. The largest river by volume in Montana, it ...

and the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains. According to the

U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The U.S. Census Bureau is part of the U ...

, the Frenchtown CDP has a total area of , of which , or 0.59%, are water. Mill Creek passes through the center of Frenchtown, while Roman Creek and Houle Creek cross the western portion of the CDP. All three creeks are tributaries of the Clark Fork to the south.

Demographics

As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2010, there were 1,825 people, 291 households, and 235 families residing in the CDP. The population density was . There were 302 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the CDP was 96.15%

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

, 1.59% Native American, 0.11% Asian, 0.79% from other races, and 1.36% from two or more races.

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

or Latino of any race were 1.81% of the population. There were 291 households, out of which 47.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 67.0% were

married couples Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...

living together, 7.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 19.2% were non-families. 12.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 4.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.03 and the average family size was 3.32. In the CDP, the population was spread out, with 34.3% under the age of 18, 6.5% from 18 to 24, 31.3% from 25 to 44, 22.7% from 45 to 64, and 5.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 106.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 101.4 males. The median income for a household in the CDP was $46,094, and the median income for a family was $45,938. Males had a median income of $36,118 versus $23,750 for females. The

per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...

for the CDP was $21,225. None of the population or families were below the

poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

Smurfit-Stone mill

In September 2015, the EPA announced that it was close to an agreement for testing and

environmental remediation Environmental remediation is the cleanup of hazardous substances dealing with the removal, treatment and containment of pollution or contaminants from Natural environment, environmental media such as soil, groundwater, sediment. Remediation may be ...

of Frenchtown's Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. mill site. Contaminants on the site include dioxins and

heavy metals upright=1.2, Crystals of lead.html" ;"title="osmium, a heavy metal nearly twice as dense as lead">osmium, a heavy metal nearly twice as dense as lead Heavy metals is a controversial and ambiguous term for metallic elements with relatively h ...

, which has raised concerns that the site might be eligible for the federal

Superfund Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the United States Environmental Pro ...

list. The

paper mill A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags, and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt ...

, which produced containerboard, "began production in 1957 under Waldorf Paper Products Co. of St. Paul, MN." The mill employed 417 workers at the time of its closure in 2010. A meeting was held in February 2017 to create a Community Advisory Group to work with the Superfund grantmaking process. Cleanup of PCBs at the mill site was ongoing as of April 2017. As the second largest taxpayer in Missoula county, the mill was the source of nearly 20% ($134281) of the Frenchtown fire district's budget, and 21.7% ($825,976) of the Frenchtown school district's budget.

Education

Frenchtown Public Schools, a unified K-12 school district which covers all of the CDP, serves all grade levels for the community The district had 1,463 students enrolled for the 2021-2022 school year. Frenchtown High School's team name is the Broncs. The Missoula Public Library has a branch location in Frenchtown.

Media

Missoula Community Radio owns the station KFGM-FM, which is licensed in Frenchtown. The newspaper provider is the ''Missoulian'', based in nearby Missoula.

Infrastructure

runs through the southern part of the community. The intersection of US Route 93 with I-90 is to the southeast in Wye. The nearest airport is the Missoula Montana Airport, to the southeast of Frenchtown.

Notable People

* Chris La Tray (born 1967), writer and Montana Poet Laureate (2023-2024)

References

External links

Community website

Frenchtown Historical Society Oral History Project
(University of Montana Archives) {{authority control Census-designated places in Missoula County, Montana Census-designated places in Montana