Bearmouth: Gateway to Bear Gulch Gold

Bearmouth never had a mine of its own, but it sat at the mouth of Bear Gulch in Granite County where the Clark Fork River could be crossed, and that made it invaluable. When placer gold was discovered up in Bear Creek in eighteen sixty-five, a short-lived camp called Beartown blazed into existence and is said to have yielded a fortune in placer gold.

Bearmouth served as the supply and shipping hub for that boom and for the larger Garnet and Coloma mining districts beyond. A pioneer family named Lannen ran the gold exchange and a ferry boat across the Clark Fork. When the mining faded in the early nineteen hundreds, so did the town. Today a two-story inn, a livery stable, and a handful of mining-era structures still stand along Interstate Ninety, the ghost of a community that got rich on other people's ore.