Caribou Ranch stair to house

Cardinal Mill doors and track

Cardinal Mill

Two weekends ago, the Boulder Open space hosted a tour of various hard rock mines in the mountains above Nederland Colorado. This is the stamp Mill for the Cardinal mine. This week we will look at the jones we visited during this tour. 

Garnet Ghost Town: Ole's Tavern

Ole's Tavern now doubles as the visitor center. 

General Store and post office

Combustion Chamber

An old combustion chamber for a boiler.

Fallen down shack

This corner of the site consists of this shack, and a number objects scattered around it, such as the shovel and spring.

Garnet Door Detail

Found Objects

One of the exciting things about the ghost town at Garnet, is its high state of preservation. I'm used to ghost towns here in Colorado being used for target practice. This site is in beautiful shape and is filled with interesting objects.

Garnet Ghost Town: Miners Cabin

In the 1800s miners migrated north from played-out placer mines in California and Colorado. Placer mining of gold or other minerals is done by washing the sand, gravel, etc. with running water, but by 1870 most area placer mining was no longer profitable. The Garnet Mountains attracted miners who collected the gold first by panning, then by using rockers and sluice boxes as the free-floating gold diminished. Although miners had located gold-bearing quartz veins, the lack of decent roads and refined extracting and smelting techniques, made further development unfeasible at that time. Silver mines elsewhere started to draw the miners out of the Garnet Mountains, but in 1893, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act set off a panic throughout the region. Silver mines closed, and within weeks thousands of unemployed miners were on to gold mining in the Garnets. Miners began to trickle back.

Garnet Ghost Town: Kelly's Saloon

"Garnet was named for the semi-precious ruby-colored stone found in the area and it was a good place to live. The surrounding mountains were rich in gold-bearing quartz. There was a school, the crime rate was low, and liquor flowed freely in the town’s many saloons. The bawdy houses did a brisk business and Missoula and Deer Lodge were close enough for necessary supplies."

Garnet Ghost Town

This is the first of a roll of images made at the Garnet Ghost Town near Missoula Montana. I liked the form of the chain hanging on the side of the log cabin.

Virginia City Fire

Virginia city train depot

Nevada city to Virginia city train depot. Virginia City MT.

Virginia City Door

Door detail from Virginia city MT.

Rocky Mountain Gold

Acid mine runoff at the headwaters of Clear Creek River. This goes into the "pure" Rocky Mountain water used in Coors beer. Yumm!

Mine entrance

Mine entrance in Stevens Gulch

Pink door

The historic town of St. Elmo is located in the mountains west of Buena Vista.

Winter is Coming

The historic town of St. Elmo is located in the mountains west of Buena Vista.  

The Stark family were part of St. Elmo's elite, a high-class group that attended church regularly. Anna was said to have been a humorless woman who severely controlled the children, believing that they were better than the other townsfolk - miners, railroad men, prostitutes and hard women. The children were rarely allowed to leave home, forbidden to attend local dances or social activities and had only each other for company. In 1890 a fire destroyed the business section and the town was never entirely rebuilt.

The survival of the town was largely due to the Stark family and their descendents, who remained the sole year-round residents for many years. According to local legend, perhaps at least one of them, Annabelle Stark, still keeps a ghostly watch over the town. (source) 

Green and Yellow Door

The historic town of St. Elmo is located in the mountains west of Buena Vista.