Eleanor “Ellie” Kincaid, 73, died peacefully on July 28 at her home on North 7th Avenue, where she had lived since 1996, back when the neighborhood was “just normal people” and not “whatever this is now.”

She arrived in Bozeman in 1994 for a nine-month visiting lecturer position in the MSU English department and stayed for thirty-two years, a fact she mentioned at every faculty potluck, city commission meeting, and chance encounter in the Co-op bulk aisle. “I was only going to stay until I finished my book,” she would say, tapping the spine of the unpublished manuscript that traveled with her from apartment to rental to the starter home she bought in 1998 for what she insisted was “a completely reasonable amount of money.”

Ellie measured the town’s transformation in rooflines. She could name the exact year the view of the M from her kitchen window disappeared behind a four-plex, and she tracked the rising cost of her property taxes with the same meticulous attention she once gave to student essays. Her daughter, Sarah, moved to Belgrade in 2019. Her son, Thomas, lives in Seattle. Both visit often and both hear about the parking situation downtown.

She is survived by her sister, Ruth Ann, of Livingston, who understands the wind.