This article was updated with new Mayor Harris comments in Nov 2025.
It’s rare for a town to go from a dark place to belle of the ball in just a few years, but that may be the best way to describe East Helena’s journey – from shrinking and scandal-plagued to Montana’s fastest-growing city set to embark on an almost unfathomable boom.
When Kelly Harris first ran for mayor in 2021, 20 years after the shuttering of the ASARCO smelter, East Helena seemed at a low ebb. The city’s population had contracted some 18 percent over the past dozen years and the new high school, having just opened, had yet to make its mark. Then the police chief was found to be distributing child pornography (he was later convicted and sent to prison), leaving local law enforcement in tatters.
