Coloma is a ghost town

Ghost town

A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...

 located in the area of the Garnet Range

Garnet, Montana

Garnet is a ghost town in Granite County, Montana, United States. Located on the dirt Wallace Creek Road, it is an abandoned mining town from the 1860s. In First Chance Creek in western Montana, the town is at the edge of the high desert in the Front Range, but sheltered in a forest...

 in Missoula County, Montana

Montana

Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...

. Not much is known about the settlement, which appears to have been founded in 1893. Records of the period indicate high gold mining

Gold mining

Gold mining is the removal of gold from the ground. There are several techniques and processes by which gold may be extracted from the earth.-History:...

 activity from 1896 onwards, with an estimated $200,000 to $250,000 in gold being extracted. 1916 saw additional activity when a mill was built on the site and additional surveys on the ore veins

Vein (geology)

In geology, a vein is a distinct sheetlike body of crystallized minerals within a rock. Veins form when mineral constituents carried by an aqueous solution within the rock mass are deposited through precipitation...

 were conducted, apparently without success. Additional prospecting

Prospecting

Prospecting is the physical search for minerals, fossils, precious metals or mineral specimens, and is also known as fossicking.Prospecting is a small-scale form of mineral exploration which is an organised, large scale effort undertaken by mineral resource companies to find commercially viable ore...

 activity occurred between 1932 and 1950.

As of 2009, the site was under archeological study by Dr. Kelly Dixon

Kelly Dixon

Dr. Kelly J. Dixon is an Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Montana and a member of the College of Arts And Sciences at UM. Her main area of work is the American West, and she is perhaps best known for her work with the Donner Party site, as well as research into saloons in...

 and a group of graduate students from the University of Montana.