2020-07-22 Monte Cristo Ghost Town Trail

hey good morning this is the trailhead for barlow point and but also to the ghost town of monte cristo which we're headed to today it's a great story this ghost town but i'm not going to bore you today with a lot of stuff but if you're interested the mountaineers have a terrific book on it called monte cristo anyway thanks for coming along [Applause] a lot of goats beard along this trail always a sign of summer progressing here's some fireweed blooming uh here's our first glimpse of the river my favorite character in all the history was a guy named joe pearsall he was the half prospector half mountain goat who discovered the rich mining veins in the hills around here having climbed some rugged very steep stuff that would make the mountaineers proud i was in 1889 and after that it just was history this became known as the richest mining district in the entire state and possibly in the entire country so joe pearsall though was kind of like a gypsy and when the klondike happened he only kept a few small claims and kept going so he avoided the bankruptcy that a lot of other people experienced here and i'll tell you more about that later okay so here in the forest which we just entered we find a beautiful little pine sap start over now here we just found one of our beautiful orchids in the pacific northwest it's a coral root so here we have a side bell which is in the wintergreen family looks like we found our first artifact of the old mining days and here's the actual twin bridge old rail bridge across the south stock river run here's some old abandoned train rails [Applause] here's the side of one of the later structures a camp for handling the mines that were later built up in the gothic basin [Applause] look at this exciting find we have wild ginger it's how beautiful that is here's a plant you want to avoid hiking this is stinging nettle i want to give you a good look so you can recognize it [Applause] i think this is the small headed pinstemon and here is silvertip peak i believe on the other side of it is a lake and poodledog pass should be somewhere on the other side of that so i'm going to tell you about my second favorite character in the history of monte cristo so three years after the discovery of these very rich minds of course the big problem is how do you get it out from a remote location like this you need a railroad and a guy named barlow a local northwestern engineer was commissioned to see if he could find a different a way that was feasible he decided you'd need to build a railroad way above the river because of how dangerous it would be they brought in their own eastern engineers and didn't listen to this guy and what happened next is history 30 years of boom and bust every bus caused by avalanches rock slides flooding trestles being swept away tunnels caving in just what a mess if they had just listened to this guy barlow who lived up here this could have been one of the wealthiest mining districts in the country hey we're here ghost town and that's monte cristo peak up there here's an old ore car hey the old powerhouse so you've seen the lower part of montecristo now we'll move on up dumas street to see the main part of town so now we're in a sort of a flat shelf where most of the community lived there would have been dozens and dozens of cabins in here this was the site of the old school house one-room schoolhouse in monte cristo and through the years it enrolled somewhere between three and 29 children which really shows a sense of community and family in the little town at one of the lower trailhead kiosks they have cool brochures with maps that's how we're able to identify all these for you so if you hike it make sure you grab one of these hey so that ends our tour of the famous monte cristo ghost town what'd you think linda i just found this so interesting and so surprising of all the relics that are still here it was an excellent day hey so thanks for coming along and hope see you on the next trail

Channel: Joe Hendricks

Views: 1,868

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Joe Hendricks, Hikes, Hiking, Mountains, Cancer, Trails, Hiking Trails, Linda Otto, Monte Cristo Ghost Town, Mountain Loop Highway, Granite Falls, Silverton, Darrington, Cascades Mountains, Mining History, Mining Railroad, Everett And Monte Cristo Railroad, South Fork Sauk River, Glacier Basin

Id: A-T1cVnOTvc

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020