Best Intermountain West City

[JA]

The Intermountain West is generally considered to be Nevada, Utah, Idaho south of the Salmon River, Arizona north of the Mogollon Rim, and western Colorado and northwestern New Mexico west of the Rocky Mountains.

This region of the country is very underpopulated and each city is quite isolated from other cities. Nature largely dominates the area and what people do live there, are often ruggedly individualistic, hostile to big government and big business, and disproportionately Mormon. At the very least, it has some of the greatest scenery and national parks America has to offer.

[Goldwater]

Viva Las Vegas!

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

The Intermountain West is generally considered to be Nevada, Utah, Idaho south of the Salmon River, Arizona north of the Mogollon Rim, and western Colorado and northwestern New Mexico west of the Rocky Mountains.

This region of the country is very underpopulated and each city is quite isolated from other cities. Nature largely dominates the area and what people do live there, are often ruggedly individualistic, hostile to big government and big business, and disproportionately Mormon. At the very least, it has some of the greatest scenery and national parks America has to offer.

This is true for people's attitudes, but sadly, tons of land out here is owned by/managed for resource extraction. Coal, gas, lumber, ranching, etc. So I'd say that ag/resource/extraction industries dominate out here, although you do find plenty of people employed in outdoors/recreation.

I voted for Boise, by the way.

[TDAS04]

Voted Salt Lake City.

[Dr. MB]

Boise.

Bend is also great.

ftr, the best Mountain West city as a whole is Missoula.

[Mr. Smith]

Ogden.

Not as crowded or obnoxious as SLUT, but close enough to still get there, just out of reach of the excesses of Provo, and better Summer weather than St. George.

Nevada and Arizona are NEVER the answer for big cities.

And I don't consider Bend, OR to be "inner-mountain", especially since I'm pretty sure it's west of Sacramento.

[DINGO Joe]

I voted for Flagstaff, but really the only one of these cities I've been to is Farmington of all places. 

[NOVA Green]

Boise would have to be #1....

Me and my wife spent an hour going through the list.

# 2 Flagstaff

# 3 Pocatello

We went through a systematic process of elimination of each City on the Poll doing a compare/contrast model trying to consider current job opportunities, cost of living, climate, political geography, and what we hypothetically would be looking at if we were to relocate to the Intermountain West.

1.) Boise--- It won out for a variety of factors... larger City with more job opportunities, Large Tech Sector, close proximity to Mountains and Rivers, that could combine our Pacific Northwest roots, with  Climate and within relatively close driving radius to our kids and grandkids in Oregon, as well as family members on my side of the house in Washington State and California.

Downsides--- extremely high cost of housing. Too hot in the Summer, too much desert.

2.) Flagstaff--- Awesome amazing and vibrant community that I first fell in love with 25 Years back, spent 20 Minutes showing my Wife various footage of one of the few places she has never experienced in this part of the Union, but ultimately even with the Ponderosa Pine Forests (Oregon Roots) it seemed like a better place to either have an extended vacation in, or even potentially retire than an actual place in the region "where we would like to live in at this fixed point in time and space", considering we could live inexpensively but job opportunities would be few.

3.) Pocatello, ID--- First popped up on my radar in the late '80s during the Punk and College Rock Movement days from various zines that I read.

I was amazed to see youtubing it that this town is still known for the music Scene (Stone Temple Pilot played there just 2 weeks back, massive underground punk scene from younger artists that does retro late '80s/early '90s Pacific Northwest Punk/Slash Metal "Grindcore".

Awesome geographical setting, but still not seeing how it fits into a "place to live" versus a "place to visit" model.