- Garnet, Montana
Garnet, located on Wallace Creek Road, a dirt road in
Montana ,United States , is an abandoned mining town from the 1860s. In First Chance Creek in westernMontana , the town is at the edge of the high desert in theFront Range , but sheltered in a forest. The town is at about convert|6000|ft|melevation .Garnet was named for the
garnet , a semi-precious stone, and the first item to be mined here, although gold quickly followed. In 1898, as many as 1,000 people lived here; [http://garnetghosttown.net/] it was abandoned 20 years later when the gold ran out. A fire in 1912 destroyed half the town, which was never rebuilt. Supplies needed in Garnet were generally obtained from nearby Bearmouth.Despite this, Garnet is one of the state's best preserved (and least visited) ghost towns. Fact|date=April 2008 Visitors can book tours with local guides, however, and the end of the summer sees the annual
Garnet Day festival ( [http://www.garnetghosttown.net/gday2002.htm See Garnet Day 2002] ).The nearest city is Missoula, about convert|20|mi|km to the west. The closest city to the east is Butte, about convert|100|mi|km away.
Trivia
* Garnet was the site of a 2004 film, "Ghouls Gone Wild".
External links
* [http://www.blm.gov/mt/st/en/fo/missoula_field_office.html Bureau of Land Management]
* [http://www.garnetghosttown.net/ GarnetGhostTown.net]
* [http://landscapephoto.us/Articles/DigitalBlackAndWhite.html#AboutThePhotos Brief trip report from LandscapePhoto.us]
* [http://visitmt.com/categories/moreinfo.asp?IDRRecordID=908&SiteID=1 Visit Montana.com]
* [http://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail.asp?trailid=SGR028-014 Trails.com]
* [http://www.legendsofamerica.com/mt-garnet.html] Garnet- Montana's Best Kept Ghost Town Secret
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