How a $100K Grant Turned a Missoula Parking Mess into a Trailhead for Everyone

FWP recently reported that the Rattlesnake Reservoir Preserve in Missoula just got a serious glow-up, thanks to a $100,000 grant from Montana FWP’s Recreational Trails Program that the City applied for back in 2024. The 45-acre spot — a former industrial water utility site the city picked up in 2017 — used to be a headache to visit: people parked wherever they could squeeze in, got tickets for it, blocked the emergency vehicle turnaround on Duncan Drive, trampled the plants doing all of the above, and faced a trailhead with zero signage telling them where the path went. Now it’s a whole new ballgame with 16 actual parking spots (two of them van-accessible ADA spaces), a 1+ mile adaptive loop trail built for everyone from wheelchair users to stroller-pushers, interpretive panels plus a new info kiosk covering the area’s cultural history, and creek access points leading to the old Rattlesnake Dam Restoration site at the north end, where it links up with the Rattlesnake Greenway. As the RTP manager put it, expanding safe, accessible recreation is the program’s whole mission, and this project checks the box…the snakes, presumably, remain unbothered.

^{Please note that the image is not an actual picture of the Rattlesnake Reservoir Preserve}