Sitting in the shade of a canopy in front of Davey's General Store, the vibrant woman pointed to a small run-down wooden house at the top of the hill.
“I lived in that house right up there,” said Morin, whose parents settled in the mining town just after the turn of the 20th century - when Garnet was its most prosperous.
In 1898, Garnet was home to 1,000 residents. By 1910, only 150 remained. A devastating fire two years later destroyed many of the buildings and by the early 1920s, Garnet was considered a ghost town.
Once a year, however, this Old West frontier town northeast of Missoula comes alive with music, guided tours, gold mining and a pie auction. About 300 people attend Garnet Interpretive Day each year. Throughout the year, about 19,000 visitors navigate the windy dirt road 11 miles off Highway 200 to uncover Garnet's lively past.
Unlike many ghost towns, visitors walk unencumbered through the three-story Wells Hotel and can touch the display of original button-hook shoes in the general store.
“You get an idea of what a frontier town was like and what the people were like in Garnet more than any other frontier town,” said Sherwood Moore, president of the Garnet Preservation Association, the event's sponsor.
Getting to know what the people were like is easy. Just ask Morin.
Once a year on Garnet Interpretive Day, Morin returns to the town where she lived the first 10 years of her life, from 1917 to 1927. For as long as there's been an interpretive day, Morin has attended.
Her recollection of that time period and her attention to detail is as crisp now as it was then. Not only does she remember the names of neighbors, but of their horses, too.
“The buildings were in nicer shape then, but yes, it looks the same to me,” she said.
Morin witnessed the town's population decline. Her first-grade class had nine students. By 1927, when she was in fourth grade, only three students remained.
Because there weren't many children in Garnet during that time, Morin kept busy watching the maids change the sheets on the beds at the Wells Hotel and often visited the blacksmith, Billy Liberty.
“I loved watching him shoe horses,” said Morin, who can't stop smiling and whose eyes light up telling the old stories. “He was afraid I'd get kicked, so he'd make me stay at the door.”
Outside Morin's home where she grew up is a kiosk. On it is a black-and-white photograph of her family. Morin is the baby in the stroller. That same photo hangs in Morin's living room in Missoula.
Morin's father, Sam Adams, ran a mercantile in town before deciding to try his luck in the mines, which proved even less successful. His mother was the postmistress and ran the office out of their home for a few years.
The family moved to Missoula in 1927 when Morin's father grew ill. He died shortly thereafter, and her mother turned their Missoula home, located next to St. Francis Xavier Church, into a boarding house to make money. Liberty, the blacksmith, often stayed with them.
Morin is a valuable resource to historians because she not only lived in Garnet, but also interacted with people who lived there from the beginning.
“We've interviewed her so many times she's probably sick of talking to the BLM,” said Allan Mathews, a historian and caretaker for the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that manages the ghost town.
Garnet Interpretive Day is an all-day family-fun affair and the leading fundraising event for the preservation association, which works to keep the buildings in good shape. The event has occurred intermittently for the past 20 years, weather and wildfires permitting.
Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at chelsi.moy@missoulian.com
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