Garnet Ghost Town
Our trip to Garnet, northeast of Missoula, is one I'd been looking forward to for awhile. Garnet was established in 1895 after gold was discovered in the area. It's up in the hills at the end of curvy, bumpy, dirt roads. The side hills are strewn with all kinds of wildflowers at this time of year. This first building was a saloon, always a prominent feature of the old mining towns.
Here we have a miner's cabin, put together quickly as the miners had more important things to do than fix up their homes. They must have been short guys! Actually, I think this cabin and others like it are rotting into the ground. Most of the ghost town is maintained just enough to keep it fairly intact, a process called "arrested decay". 
We found this bird's nest on one of the cabins.
Here is a 'photo op', wildflowers against the wall of an old building. Notice the low window. Apparently the miners slept on the floor and they could more easily look out this low window.
I had never seen so much beargrass as I did on this drive. It was almost as prolific as the pine trees.
Last, but not least, we found this "porta-potty outside the ruins of a cabin. It must have been a summer potty, as they didn't bother to put up walls around it.
Our trip to Garnet, northeast of Missoula, is one I'd been looking forward to for awhile. Garnet was established in 1895 after gold was discovered in the area. It's up in the hills at the end of curvy, bumpy, dirt roads. The side hills are strewn with all kinds of wildflowers at this time of year. This first building was a saloon, always a prominent feature of the old mining towns.
Here we have a miner's cabin, put together quickly as the miners had more important things to do than fix up their homes. They must have been short guys! Actually, I think this cabin and others like it are rotting into the ground. Most of the ghost town is maintained just enough to keep it fairly intact, a process called "arrested decay". 
We found this bird's nest on one of the cabins.
Here is a 'photo op', wildflowers against the wall of an old building. Notice the low window. Apparently the miners slept on the floor and they could more easily look out this low window.
I had never seen so much beargrass as I did on this drive. It was almost as prolific as the pine trees.
Last, but not least, we found this "porta-potty outside the ruins of a cabin. It must have been a summer potty, as they didn't bother to put up walls around it.
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