At Sand Park Cemetery, five miners were buried between 1898 and 1914, and little more is known about them than their names and years of death. Their simple grave markers reflect the humble circumstances of men who likely died far from family while seeking gold in the Garnet Mountains. Many other hard-rock-era miners who had family and means were buried instead in consecrated ground in places such as Missoula and Deer Lodge. Some of those buried here likely came from the nearby mining town of Coloma, which existed from 1895 to 1908 and once drew fortune seekers who bought supplies at the company store and visited its saloons. One of the dead, Frank Hamilton, was buried in the Coloma Cemetery in 1905 under the auspices of the Garnet Miners Union; he was said to be about 35 years old, and almost nothing was known of his background beyond a presumed birth in Canon City, Colorado. Remnants such as an old pair of boots recall the hard lives of these early miners, for whom adequate shelter and clothing were luxuries and whose accidents, illnesses, and lack of doctors often brought shorter lives.