About this city
Also known as: Montana's Best Preserved Ghost Town
Garnet is a historically profound, incredibly atmospheric ghost town hidden deep within a remote, densely forested mountain ravine of the Garnet Range in Granite County, west-central Montana. Plotted in the 1890s following the discovery of incredibly rich gold-bearing quartz veins, it exploded into a bustling mining boomtown of thousands before rapidly emptying as the veins ran dry by the 1920s. Today, preserved lovingly by the Bureau of Land Management, Garnet stands proudly as Montana's premier most intact, unaltered historic ghost town. It features over thirty surviving hand-hewn pioneer log cabins, hotels, and saloons in a state of frozen arrested decay, completely untouched by modern commercialization.
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Practical Tourism Metadata
Suggested stay: 1 day
Walk past the haunting, weather-beaten wooden paths to step inside the multi-story historic 1897 Wells Hotel building. Peer through the dusty glass windows of old log blacksmith shops and miner cabins. Explore the massive historic iron stamp mill ruins hidden among the mountain pine trees. Hike past historic gold mine shafts along the scenic Garnet Winter Trail network.