One dead town – Garnet, Montana

The last full-time resident lasted here until the 1960s. She was the lone holdout on this town that had survived the Great Depression and the boom and bust cycles of the gold mining business. After a major fire swept through the town in the 1930s, it was really hard for the town to have much of a future.

Only a short drive away from Missoula, Garnet, MT stands as a testament to Montana’s and the West’s shared history.  Once a 32 ounce nugget of gold was discovered here, a miners town quickly popped up.  As the brochure informed us, the miners who relocated here put their houses up quickly because less time building means more time mining for gold.  So while the houses were sturdy enough, there was little attention to extravagance.

In a way, Garnet is a typical town that littered the West during all of the various gold rushes that ushered in new eras of prosperity and heartbreak in our nation’s history.  Yet, Garnet is unusual in a number of ways.

First, it is still around.  It is claimed that it is the best preserved ghost town in all of Montana. The state took over the site and started restoring it in the 1980s. Second, it was a different kind of mining town because families moved there and helped support their miner fathers and husbands. Since the boom happened here after the famous 1849 California gold rush, a lot of the miners were not bachelors.  This provided a completely different social scene than most mining towns. A school was opened up, dances were held, and to some extent a social stigma existed against practices of ill-repute.

But if you’re into that sort of thing, don’t worry, this town of 1,000 people at its height had its fair share of saloons and brothels.  It is a mining town, after all.

So enjoy some of the pictures from this great town.

The general store on Main Street.

Inside the General Store.

Inside the General Store.

Inside one of the many saloons.

Old wall paper.

Inside the main hotel in town.

In the kitchen of the hotel.

Marc in the hotel kitchen.

Coffee maker in the hotel.

Looking at the second floor of the hotel.

The third floor of the hotel – this is where it was cheap to rent a space on the floor.

Cool shot inside a blacksmith’s shop.

The potty.

This is the old view of the finest house in Garnet.

The same view, today.

Main Street.

The old, old Wild West

For those that don’t know, Marc and I renovated and restored a historical home in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore in the early 2000’s (can’t believe I can describe a timeframe as “the early 2000s). Mt. Vernon is a beautiful community in that struggling (succeeding?) city and our home was built in 1790. We learned a lot about construction, each other, and budgeting during that process.

One of the constantly reocurring subjects in the neighborhood dealt with finding the right balance between historical preservation and economic development.  Is it okay, for example, to sacrifice the historical integrity of a house, a structure, a wall, a set of windows, etc. in order to make that structure/home/room more livable for today’s modern times? I’m not really sure that there is a right answer. 

And so we found ourselves in Cody, WY. We wanted to see something that really, truly, reminded us of the history of the West. One of the reasons we came to Cody to esacpe the cold and dampness of Yellowstone was to see this attraction.  And it was worth it – definitely a cool place to come visit.  Here’s a blurb from their web site: 

Historic Trail Town is a collection of buildings and relics of the Wyoming frontier. Local archaeologist Bob Edgar created Trail Town by moving 26 buildings built between 1879 and 1901 to the location that was once the site of Old Cody City. Walk the boardwalks of these fascinating buildings for a step back in time. Among the buildings are an old saloon, livery barn, blacksmith shop, general stores, post office and schools. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s “Hole-in-the-Wall” cabin is also located there. See over 100 horse drawn vehicles and the original wagon trail.

The “Museum of the Old West” houses historic Plains Indians materials, guns of the frontier, carriages, clothing and many other relics of the past. Jeremiah ” Liver-Eating” Johnson, the mountain man, is buried in the cemetery along with several other notorious Western characters.

It was really neat to stroll through the “town” at any pace we wanted to. The number of artifacts they have, in addition to the actual buildings themseleves, was quite impressive. Arrowheads, Native American garb, rifles, buffalo hide, all complemented the wagons and carriages and saddles of the old West.  It was really neat.  One of the two Butch Cassiday & the Sundance Kid related buildings even had bullet holes in the door.  

The town isn’t a natural town.  These buildings were never together in such a manner and they were taken away from their historical context in order to be placed here.  Is that such a sin, though? Considering how difficult the winters are here and how rough weather is on buildings in general, it is pretty impressive that these buildings are in one place. A place where a group of volunteers and employees can work together to preserve some of the few remaining pieces of Wyoming (and American) history.  Are “we” better off to be able to have dedicated people to care for these buildings so that we can remember our own collective history? I think so.