Best of Montana Moment: Garnet, ghost town where time stands still

MISSOULA, Mont. — About 35-miles northeast of Missoula, on Bureau of Land Management ground, you will find one of Montana's most intact ghost towns.

In our Montana Moment, we found that the abandoned mining town is kept alive through its rich past.

It's a quiet spot, high in the hills in Granite County.

The 24,000 visitors who visit the town every year seem to shift into quiet gear as they peruse its old buildings and take in its lovely setting.

When NBC Montana visited Garnet in early October an early snow had dusted the trees that had just started to turn color.

But the sun was out, and the roofs of the buildings were dripping melted snow onto the ground.

Ruth and Murkus Altherr had seen the Garnet sign and decided to investigate.

The couple is from Switzerland, so they are used to beautiful scenery.

But they found Garnet enchanting.

"In Europe we have a lot of inhabitants," said Ruth, " and here, there are so few people. It's nature."

David Abrams is a public affairs specialist with the Bureau of Land Management office in Butte.

"This is the kind of place," he said, "where you can stand in the middle of the street, close your eyes and be transported back in time."

"It's quiet now," said Abrams. But he said, in its past, Garnet would have been noisier and bustling with people going on about their day.

In the 1860's, miners came to the area to mine placer gold with pans or sluice boxes.

But in the 1890's, Garnet sprung up to accommodate hard rock gold mining.

Unlike many of Montana's mining towns Garnet was not a company town.

"You didn't have large companies owning a lot of the mining claims," said Maria Craig, a BLM outdoor recreation planner and archaeologist, "so you didn't have large companies owning a lot of the mining claims. You had men that maybe had smaller companies."

Many of the miners who came here in the 1860's were single men.

But the new town of Garnet, with its hotels, stores, a butcher shop, candy store and doctor's office was a place for the men to bring their families.

"This was a family town," said Craig. " There were dances and quilting bees and a lot of family oriented events."

They had dances every Saturday night in the Miners Union Hall or the Wells.

The Wells was a fancy hotel, and David Abrams took a few minutes to snap pictures of the now weathered, but still straight- standing, handsome structure.

There were saloons too.

Ole's Saloon was a popular watering hole.

It now houses the ghost town's Visitor's Center.

There was a jail.

But it didn't get used much.

"There's a story about a guy shooting a dog," said Craig. So he was in there. But other than that, we don't know a lot more."

Abrams said the population of Garnet ebbed and flowed until WWII.

At its peak in the 1890's,as many as 1,000 people called it home.

"It was a boom town," said Craig.

In its hay day Garnet had 20 mines in operation.

But in about 1912 a fire roared through town.

"That burned a lot of the commercial buildings in the main part of town," said Craig," and people started leaving. Then in the 1930's, people started coming back, but not as many."

World War II brought more changes.

"Gold mining had to be instrumental to the war effort," said Craig. " So that shut down some of the mining and people started leaving again."

But not everybody.

Abrams and Craig took us up the hill to see another building that was constructed in the late 1930's or early 40's.

"We're walking into the old schoolhouse," said Craig, of the one-room classroom.

Inside, there are a few old time desks and windows that look out upon a woodsy scene.

We walked past a livery stable and blacksmith shop.

We took some time to check out Frank A. Davey's Store.

Here, Garnet residents could buy just about anything they needed, from tobacco to pick axes.

At about 6,000 feet, Garnet gets cold and in those mining days, it was a long way from other towns.

By contemporary standards it wasn't an easy life.

Garnet folks had to be resilient and self-sufficient.

It took a lot of work to get things done, said Maria Craig. "It's just amazing."

Garnet is still fairly isolated.

But that's part of its allure.

"If we really listen," said David Abrams," we can hear the past."

We can see it, and feel it too, here in Garnet, where miners cabins stand witness to a town where time stands still.