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Garnet Ghost Town
Montana’s Best-Preserved Ghost Town
To walk the streets of this ghost town is to step back in time, free from intrusions of modern society.
Montana’s most intact ghost town was never built to last. Garnet endures along with the spirits of the rugged gold miners and their families who carved a community in the heart of the Garnet Mountain Range at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1898, some 1,000 people knew Garnet as home. The town was a union town, with a strong miners’ union, the Garnet Western Labor Union, negotiating with mine owners for fair pay, working hours and safety rules. The union hall doubled as the town’s dance hall and resonated with dances, theater, harvest festivals and union meetings.
But, by 1905, the gold was playing out and only 150 people remained. A raging fire in 1912 and hardships on the home front during World War I sent most of the remaining miners, wives and children packing . Garnet slowly slipped into obscurity, despite a brief renewal of mining in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Today, Garnet’s fame lies not in its gold, but in the rich history of the town and its emblematic hard-scrabble character.
Garnet is quite different from the rip-roaring frontier gold-mining towns in Montana such as Bannack and Virginia City with their lawlessness, vigilantes, and extra-legal hangings. The ghosts of Garnet sleep well. For one thing, Garnet was settled three decades after these early placer-mining towns. The gold mines that gave rise to the town of Garnet were hard-rock mines that demanded entrepreneurs with access to industrial equipment. Hundreds of miners brought their families to live at the top of the long, steep grade from the Northern Pacific Railroad stop at Bearmouth. Many businesses thrived on Main Street. More than 50 children attended the school.
The men worked hard, without electricity, with only steam engines and hand tools, removing more than 60,000 ounces of gold, 50,000 ounces of silver, and 60,000 ounces of copper before the rich veins of minerals were tapped out. Garnet was mostly left to the memories and the ghosts when the town’s remaining merchant, Frank Davey, died in 1947.
The Bureau of Land Management and the Garnet Preservation Association work together to preserve many original buildings, including the stately Wells Hotel, for posterity. Behind the scenes at Garnet, workers stabilize the old buildings to keep them from falling down. The goal is to retain the ghostly nature of the abandoned buildings while preserving the roofs from caving in and the walls from giving away.
The deadlines for applications for the cabin lottery drawing is the first Friday of November. See the winter cabin rental link for more information.
Fee Area:
When to visit:
Garnet is open year-round. Wheeled vehicles are allowed on the road from May 1 through January 1. Please note that visitors may want to park in the designated parking lots and ski or snowmobile to the town instead of driving on snow-bound roads in late fall. In winter, the tour to Garnet is a popular snowmobile and cross-country ski trip. Get Directions
Visitor Center Hours:
$3 a person over 15 years of age. The BLM uses entrance fees to help protect, preserve and interpret Garnet Ghost Town.
The Gift Store is open Memorial Day to the end of September each year.
9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
For additional information:
BLM, Missoula Field Office
3255 Fort Missoula Road
Missoula, MT 59804
(406)329-3914
Garnet Preservation Association
Email us at: garnetghosttown@gmail.com
