Every so often, there's a boom somewhere in the valley. Sometimes it's loud enough to shake a house. Sometimes it sounds far away. Sometimes half the town seems to hear it, and sometimes only a few people do.
Then the posts start.
Was it a transformer? Tannerite? Construction? A train? Quarry blasting? A meteor? Somebody setting off something they probably shouldn't have?
Usually there's an explanation offered. Usually there are several. Sometimes nobody really knows.
At some point, the Bozeman Boom became more than just a loud noise. It became a local thing. People joke about finally hearing one. People who have never heard it wonder whether everyone else is exaggerating. And whenever another one happens, somebody inevitably asks:
Did anyone else hear that?
The story gets even stranger because Montana has an older unexplained-boom story. In 1805, while the Corps of Discovery was near the Great Falls of the Missouri, Meriwether Lewis wrote about hearing repeated sounds like distant artillery on a calm, clear day. He considered possible explanations and ultimately said he could not account for it.
Was that the Bozeman Boom? There's no way to know, and Lewis was nowhere near present-day Bozeman. But the story has become part of the fun.
So what is this site?
Bozeman Boom is a place to keep track of it.
If you hear one, report when you heard it, roughly where you were, and what it sounded like. That's it. You don't have to decide what caused it.
The reports go on the map. Over time, maybe patterns show up. Maybe certain explanations become obvious. Maybe we just end up with a very detailed record of Bozeman making strange noises.
Either way, the next time something rattles the windows, there'll be somewhere to check.