Bearmouth: Gateway to the Gulch

Bearmouth never had a mine of its own. Its job was to serve the ones that did. When gold was found in the hills north of here in the eighteen sixties, mining camps materialized almost overnight. Bearmouth grew up on the Clark Fork River below them as a trading post, gold exchange, and ferry landing. A family named Lannen ran the boats across the river and handled the gold coming down from the camps.

For decades, rich ore from the mines at Garnet, Beartown, and Coloma funneled through Bearmouth on its way to distant smelters. When the mines played out and the camps emptied, Bearmouth had nothing of its own to fall back on. A few structures survive along the old highway, quiet reminders of a time when fortunes passed through this riverside flat on their way to somewhere else.