I find the Gallatin Gateway community immensely attractive on multiple dimensions. Its location is grand; an easy ten miles to Bozeman on paved back roads, a near perfect bike commute. It enjoys a spectacular setting with the Spanish Peaks to the south, the 100,000-acre Flying D ranch to the west, and the Gallatin River running through it.

Forty years ago, I selected Gateway as my community and found a nearby ranch to make my home. While I’ve lived other places during academic terms, none has approximated Gateway’s qualities of community.

Gateway is a magnet for charming eccentrics. Philosophically and psychologically libertarian, it tolerates folks with unusual visions of the good life—if they don’t impose on others. Old-timers are remarkably open and receptive to newcomers who respect Gateway’s history, scale, and culture—and who aren’t presumptuous. And Gateway people are generous. When I was adapting our spring creek and ponds to meet the needs of Eagle Mount kids and Wounded Warriors, two Gateway firms, Big Timber Works and Quarry Works, donated material.

Gateway folks welcome contributors to the community—including those with wealth or Ivy degrees—if they don’t flaunt either. And they value independence, theirs and others. They respect competence in traditional physical activities, people who deal well with the furniture of the world—and with people who can put computers to good ends. (Click here for an example.)

The Gallatin Gateway Community Center exemplifies the cooperative character of our town. It was built entirely by volunteer labor and donated material, and is owned and operated by the Willing Workers Ladies Aid, an organization formed in WWI to aid service men. Gateway folks are proud that no government funds were used in this project. Here’s its mission statement:

“The non-profit WWLA operates the community center largely with volunteer labor, dedicated fund raising and donations. Your rental dollar certainly helps keep the doors open, but also allows the WWLA to further their charitable programs in the community.”

Gateway residents presume goodwill and honesty when interacting with neighbors. Being nasty, dishonest, or ungracious yields the price of exclusion. And it’s costly to treat us as simple rubes, easily conned.

A few years ago a fellow recently from Chicago told us he would help the community by building a convenience store. The business soon failed and degenerated into a strip club, “Full Bar, Full Nude” the sign boasts. It generates all kinds of bad behavior. Drunks, I assume from there, have run through our fences, taken out two power poles, and consistently litter Cottonwood Road. I know this because now I clean the borrow pit each week rather than twice a year. This is a classic externality. The spillovers from the strip club have negative implications for neighbors. Traffic fatalities, litter, and unsavory clientele all work to depress and injure the property rights and economic value of the community. Would any upstanding citizen choose to live in proximity to such a place?

More recently, another newcomer proposed a major development adjacent to the strip club. Having been bitten once, the community was alert to another disruptive, costly intrusion. We want to protect the value of and rights to our property.

Actually he may have done us an unintended favor, for in response we created the Gateway Planning Committee. The mission statement reads:

“...our mission is to gather information and promote open discussion regarding the future growth of our community, in a neutral, open and unbiased forum. We are committed to working together with each other, members of the community and civic leaders to develop a neighborhood plan that has strong support from large and small property owners alike.”

With welcome help from the Gallatin County Planning Department, and in the Gateway tradition, we hosted the first of several planned meetings in the Community Center, a buffalo chili feed. At this meeting people ranked their concerns, and we are circulating a survey among those in the proposed district.

Not surprisingly, protecting property rights ranked first at the meeting and high in the formal survey. Gateway folks, like responsible people elsewhere, don’t want their property rights violated and their home values diminished by insensitive, self-serving developments. And as rural westerners, Gateway citizens know how to deal with predators—critters that take value from others.