Garnet ghost town

Thirteen saloons, three hotels, and a windowless attic where you could sleep for a quarter if you could not afford a room.

Garnet sits in the Garnet Mountains of Granite County, Montana, and the Bureau of Land Management puts it in one line: a thousand people called Garnet home in the 1890s while they scoured the mountains for gold, and it was largely abandoned twenty years later when the gold ran out.

Prospectors had worked these hills since the 1860s, but no town appeared until a stamp mill was built at First Chance Gulch in 1895. It was called Mitchell at first and became Garnet in 1897. At its height it had close to thirteen saloons, grocery stores, a barber shop, a mercantile store and three hotels, the hotels there for people passing through or coming in to collect gold. Rooms ran one to three dollars a night. Miners who could not manage that took the attic instead.

The buildings still carry the names of the people who put them up. Ole Dahl built the Dahl Saloon, known as Ole's and as The Joint, along with the Dahl House. Robert Moore built Kelly's Saloon. Hugh Hannifen built Hannifen House. Judson and Blaidsell built the F. A. Davey Store, and John and Winifred Wells built the Wells Hotel. Supplies came in from Bearmouth.

As many as a thousand people lived here in 1898. By 1900 it was three hundred. The population rose and fell with the fortunes of the mines, and a fire in 1912 destroyed much of the town.

What survived is one of the best preserved ghost towns in Montana, managed by the BLM and visited by about 16,000 people a year. Garnet Day falls on the third Saturday each year.

Getting there: from State Highway 200, about 30 miles east of Missoula, turn south between mile markers 22 and 23 and follow the signs for 10 miles. From Interstate 90, take the Drummond or Bearmouth exit, follow old U.S. 10 to Bear Gulch Road and go 11 miles up. That second route is steep and narrow.