Montana’s New Wealthiest Small Town Has A Surprising Location

When it comes to areas of Montana with lots of money and expensive real estate, places like Bozeman, Whitefish, or Big Sky might come to mind first. However, a new list of the wealthiest small towns in America has been released and Montana's wealthiest small town made us grab a map.

How was Montana's wealthiest small town measured? This is the simple part. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau was gathered by GOBankingRates to determine the wealthiest small town in each of the 50 states, except for Alaska. (Apparently lack of data for their small towns was an issue.)

The rankings were based on the reported household income levels for towns that had between 500 and 15,000 households. That's it. They kept it simple. Real estate prices and other costs were not taken into account. The small towns that were selected were based solely on household income levels.

The place that ended up being Montana's wealthiest small town was an interesting winner, as it's more of "small piece of a bigger town". But by definition, the town selected is actually defined as a CDP, or "census-designated place". Unless you live in those types of places, they may not sound like a real town.

To be fair, the entire list of wealthiest small towns across the country had lots of lesser known places. We really did grab a map to find most of the top towns because we hadn't heard of them before. (It's refreshing to learn a new tidbit about your own state once in a while!)

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So, without further ado - what is Montana's new wealthiest small town? It's Helena Valley Northeast with a Median Income of $115,833. Not familiar with Helena Valley Northeast? This is what Wikipedia has to say:

Helena Valley Northeast is a census-designated place (CDP) in Lewis and Clark County, Montana, United States. The population was 2,995 at the 2010 census.[2] It is part of the Helena Micropolitan Statistical Area.

This small town deemed Helena Valley Northeast includes the entire Lake Helena area, which includes some pricey real estate. See the full list of The Richest Small Town In Every State here, as published by GOBankingRates.