Garnet Ghost Town | Overland Expedition Adventure to Garnet, Montana

Hey guys, it’s Kevin again…we are in Garnet Ghost Town, or is it Garnett Ghost Town perhaps. Everybody seems to have a variation of how to say everything depending upon where you live. Anyway I mentioned to you the last place, Colma [Montana] which was founded in 1896, was like a ghost city since there were so many buildings.

Well in keeping with that trend I suppose this Garnet is going to be a ghost metropolis or something or other, cause there’s got to be 30 or 40 buildings around here that are in extremely good condition.

Garnet Montana Ghost Town Extraordinaire!

If you don’t know much about Garnet Ghost Town, it was a mining town, founded in the 1860s. It wasn’t even called Garnet back in the day, but Mitchell, and only had ten buildings this website. Guess the name got changed along the way. I think its considered the best preserved among the ghost towns. One interesting fact is that the oldest living member Mary Jane Adams Morin visits every single year on Garnet Day, imagine that.

I’m just going to show you around town. I guess where I am is about half the town right here. These buildings are in outstanding condition. They had a caretaker that lived here and kind of kept vandalism down, just by staying, that they were living here. So that was up until the sixties and then in the seventies they started kind of restoring some of the buildings that were crumbling and really doing a pretty good job of keeping track of stuff. The BLM [Bureau of Land Management] took it over and now charges a tiny entrance fee to help with the upkeep and there’s also on staff caretaker as well.

I read somewhere about a Volunteering program, not sure if it still runs. BLM boards you up in one of these historical cabins and feeds you. You basically help out by giving guiding tours, and maintaining the historic structures, brushing and cutting the trails etc. It would be pretty rugged though, no electricity, running water or WiFi, and people have claimed that ghosts DO come out to play at night. But then again, that would be fun, if you are into that sort of entertainment.

Looking around, I have to say, I’m absolutely in ghost-town heaven checking all these places out. These buildings were, you know, meant more as kind of temporary shelter while the mining took place and not necessarily meant to withstand hundred and twenty plus years of weather and snow and more brutal winters. They get you know multiple feet of snow up here. This is, we are in Fall West Montana, at the Garnet Mountain Range which is, I think we’re about, I don’t know 4000-5000 foot elevation or something like that.

So anyway I’m gonna drop off and just show you one last building here. (Check the video)

This one, now this one doesn’t have a whole long history but it just says that it was one of the miners homes. Pretty simple living you know, anything they could do to to just, you know exist for another day to hit the ores in the rich mine, digging through you know tons and tons and tons of ore. I read somewhere that nine-tenths of the stuff that they dug up was just waste. The rest of it ended up going down to, down the work huts, down to the stamping mills and such and then you know very very small percentage of that then became you know usable as gold or some kind of minerals you know copper, silver, whatever.

So anyway I’ll check back with you again. But definitely get to Garnet, this place is outstanding if you love, if you love ghost towns and you know just being out in the middle of the woods away from people, its pretty damned awesome.

Thanks for stopping in.