Explore one of the West’s best-preserved ghost towns in Garnet, Montana

Garnet, Montana, is considered one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the American West. Pam LeBlanc photo

​Remember that episode of “The Brady Bunch,” when our favorite blended family stumbled into a perfectly preserved ghost town and met a crotchety prospector wearing a crumpled felt hat?

I felt kind of like that this week, when I detoured to the skeletal remains of the town of Garnet, about 30 miles east of Missoula, Montana.

More than twenty wooden buildings, including old log cabins, a three-story hotel and a dry goods store, still stand in the old town. I spent a few hours trying to imagine what it was like to live there during the mining boom of the late 1890s.

The town sprung up after an enterprising businessman built a mill to extract the precious metal from rocks excavated from the nearby hills. In its heyday, it included seven hotels, three livery stables, 13 saloons, four stores, a school, a doctor’s office, a drugstore, a union hall, two barber shops and – hooray! – a candy shop.

The boom didn’t last. The gold veins mostly ran out by 1900, and by 1905 most folks had abandoned their cabins. The population shrunk from about 1,000 to just 150. Then, in 1912, a fire raced through the community, destroying many of the structures. World War II drove most of the remaining residents out.

Read more: From wildlife to wildfires, 10 memorable moments from rafting the Snake River in Idaho

Miners lived in log cabins tucked on hillsides in Garnet, Montana. Pam LeBlanc photo

When gold prices jumped in 1934, the town experienced a bit of a rebirth. New buildings went up, the mines reopened, and town briefly bustled once again. But the advent of World War II ended that boom, too. People moved away, but left their homes, and much of the furniture inside them, behind.

Looters hauled off many of the artifacts in the following years, but today the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Garnet Preservation Association protect and preserve the site, considered one of Montana’s most intact ghost towns.

I didn’t find any old prospectors during my visit, but I did find plenty of other treasures.

A old sewing machine sits inside a hotel in the ghost town of Garnet, Montana. Pam LeBlacn photo

Highlights? Finding an old bicycle and lots of old household products inside the main downtown store. Climbing a set of creaky stairs to explore the pint-sized rooms of the old hotel. Chatting with a ranger at the visitor’s center, who showed me a collection of old bottles and cans and explained that miners didn’t eat many fruits or vegetables and relied on bitters to stay regular.

For more information about Garnet, go here.