The Garnet Mountains once rang with dynamite blasts, hooves on steep narrow roads, miners' voices in places such as Beartown, Top O'Deep, and Reynolds City, and loggers cutting timber for railroad ties and mine shafts. The region's gold formed when, between 75 and 70 million years ago, thrust faults carried the Sapphire Block eastward from the top of the Idaho batholith near today's Montana-Idaho border, and granite magma rising from the earth's crust cooled in fractures of sedimentary rock, separating quartz and gold into veins; as the rocks weathered, gold flakes eroded into streams and were recovered by prospectors. Logging and mining later formed a close alliance in the Garnet Range, with timber supplying mineshaft beams, railroad ties, and fuel for trains hauling ore from quartz lode mines. The range itself took its name from garnet crystals formed when granitic magma entered limestone and created a skarn. Key events in the area's history include the 1865 gold strike at Bear Creek that began the placer mining era, the 1883 completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the 1895 founding of Mitchell, soon called Garnet, the 1896 completion of the Coloma-Garnet Bearmouth Road, the 1898 opening of the Fairview quartz lode mine, the 1912 fire in Garnet that ended the hard-rock era, the 1937 establishment of Lubrecht Experimental Forest, and the 1956 start of the Barite Mine.