2006 UPDATED OPEN SPACE PLAN Approved by City Council and Board of County Commissioners.  Maps below.  Call 721-PARK or stop by Parks and Recreation for a hard copy of the plan.

OPEN SPACE PLAN MAPS (Please note, this Adobe Acrobat .pdf file is over 6MB and may take a few minutes to download.)

Learn more about Missoula's Open Space Program

In 1995, due to concerns about the loss of open space from booming growth, citizens and planners worked together to draft an open space plan for the greater Missoula area.  Both the City Council and the County Commissioners adopted the plan in August of 1995.  The plan served as the guideline for acquiring open space over the past 10 years with the $5 million bond city voters approved that same year.  In 2005, with the bond money nearly gone and ten years having passed since adoption of the Open Space Plan, the Open Space Program Manager, Jackie Corday, and the Open Space Advisory Committee (OSAC) decided it was time to review and update the plan. 

Citizens are encouraged to review the plan at the link above or stop by the Parks Department or the Office of Planning and Grants to review a copy. 

The plan has been substantially amended, updated and re-organized, but the vision set forth in 1995 for creating an open space system for the greater Missoula area that focused on protecting our surrounding hillsides, wildlife habitat, river corridors and expanding our trail system to connect people to parks and other destinations, remains the same.  The updated plan will serve as the guide for expanding our open space system within the greater Missoula area over the next ten years.

The process of updating the plan began with the formation of an OSAC sub-committee review in the spring of 2005 and then the formation of a 20-member citizen Open Space Working Group in the fall.  The working group met from October 2005 to January 2006 and then drafted a vision statement, guiding principles, and criteria for evaluating open space needs.  The Parks Department and the working group then jointly hosted a public open house in January to share a draft of their work with the public and seek citizen input.  A questionnaire regarding open space priorities was posted on the Parks website prior to the meeting and also distributed during the meeting.  Approximately 120 people attended the open house and over 50 questionnaires were returned to Parks. 

The City’s Open Space Program (under the Parks & Recreation Department) has been very successful in protecting Mt. Jumbo and Mt. Sentinel, thanks in large part to partnerships with Five Valleys Land Trust, the US Forest Service, Fish Wildlife & Parks, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which leveraged the bond money further.  The City also used the money to expand the commuter trail system (Bitterroot Spur, Kim Williams, and Milwaukee corridor), purchase lands at Fort Missoula, land in the North Hills, and high-quality riparian lands along the Clark Fork River.   Conservation lands in Missoula’s open space system now total almost 3,300 acres.  The majority of these lands are managed for their wildlife values, scenic beauty, and passive recreation such as hiking, bird watching, and river access.  These lands add immeasurable value to Missoula’s quality of life.