Someone Just Paid $2.25 Million for an Entire Montana Town — And It’s One of Hundreds You Can Still Walk Through

Today, more than 30 structures remain standing at Garnet, including a hotel, a mine hoist house, and several cabins. The BLM offers guided tours seasonally and maintains the site under its historic preservation mandate. Visitors can walk through the structures, many of which still contain furniture, tools, and personal effects left behind when residents departed.

Rimini: From Silver Boom to War Dogs

Rimini, Montana is one of the more unusual ghost towns on the map — not just for its mining origins, but for an unexpected wartime chapter that defines its legacy. Located in Lewis and Clark County, approximately 12 miles southwest of Helena via a Forest Service road, Rimini experienced its first boom in the 1870s as a silver mining camp.

The town’s second act came during World War II. In 1942, Rimini became the location of the U.S. Army’s War Dog Reception and Training Center, one of the military’s primary facilities for training dogs used in combat and reconnaissance operations overseas. For two years, the facility trained hundreds of dogs — and their handlers — before the program relocated and Rimini returned to quiet.

Rimini’s mining infrastructure and some structural remnants from the war dog era still stand. The site is accessible via unpaved road and draws a mix of history enthusiasts, hikers, and amateur photographers. No formal admission fee is charged for the townsite itself, though road conditions vary significantly by season.

Mossmain and Monida: Two Towns, Two Different Kinds of Silence

Not all of Montana’s ghost towns require a backcountry drive. Mossmain sits between Billings and Laurel along the Yellowstone River corridor — visible, according to local historians and the Moss Mansion historical society, from well-traveled roads. It is what researchers call a ghost town “hiding in plain sight,” a settlement that faded as agricultural economics shifted and rail lines reorganized, leaving behind foundations and structures that commuters pass without a second glance.

Monida occupies a different register entirely. Located near the Idaho border in Beaverhead County at an elevation exceeding 6,800 feet, Monida sits at the southern end of the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge corridor. Its name combines the first syllables of Montana and Idaho, a nod to its border position. Once a railroad town on the Union Pacific line, Monida lost its economic reason for existing when freight patterns changed in the mid-20th century.

What draws photographers and historians to Monida specifically is precisely the condition travel writers describe: it does not perform abandonment for tourists. There is no interpretive signage, no gift shop. There are collapsing walls, rusted infrastructure, and a landscape that makes the passage of time feel physical. According to Love Exploring, America’s abandoned places carry a particular documentary power — “then and now” comparisons that a living town simply cannot offer.

The Elkmont Connection: When a Ghost Town Sits Inside a National Park

Montana’s ghost town concentration is exceptional, but the national phenomenon extends well beyond state lines. Elkmont, located within Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, represents perhaps the most visited ghost town in the country — not because travelers seek it out, but because it sits mere steps from the park’s largest campground, also called Elkmont.

According to Roadtrippers, visitors can explore the remains of a logging community and two turn-of-the-century resort settlements that operated in the area before the National Park Service acquired the land. The structures carry what writers describe as an “eerie, summer camp vibe” — recognizable shapes, domestic in scale, emptied of people.