Apples, Optimism, and Frank Lloyd Wright in the Bitterroot

MHS Community Preservation Coordinator Kate Hampton reveals how the brief flowering of the University Heights community—a planned summer residential colony near Darby—grew out of multiple, over­lapping strains of optimism, including the Bitterroot Valley’s enthusiasm for commercial apple growing, the economic confidence engendered by railroad building, the social aspirations embedded in high-end western tourism, and the riches promised by land speculation.