{"id":1738,"slug":"melmont-melmont-washington","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Melmont was built in 1900 for a single customer. The Northwest Improvement Company — Northern Pacific's coal subsidiary — opened the Melmont mine on the Carbon River between Carbonado and Fairfax, and the town that followed existed to feed the railroad. Its coal, a high-grade blacksmith's coal, went exclusively to Northern Pacific locomotives; over sixteen working years the mine shipped roughly 900,000 tons, about four percent of Pierce County's total output.","The company town was complete and stratified: a depot, schoolhouse, saloon, and a hotel that held the post office, butcher, and store, with rows of miners' cottages sorted — by the surviving account — along nationality lines, miners self-segregated by origin. The men eventually organized as United Mine Workers local 2963. Coal went three miles up the canyon to Carbonado for processing."]},{"heading":"Taken apart twice","paragraphs":["The end came in layers. The post office closed in 1915, mail rerouting through Fairfax; the Northwest Improvement Company left in 1918; Carbon Hill Coal worked briefly to 1919; and a forest fire in the early 1920s destroyed most of what the closure had left. The last resident, Andrew Montleon, lived in the basement of the second schoolhouse; the school's lumber was recycled into the Carbon River Ranch building down the line.","Today the townsite is a hike, not an address — the old rail grade carries the Melmont trail under the high Fairfax bridge, past the school foundation, a dynamite shed, and a wagon-bridge abutment. The file keeps it as mining heritage on a managed corridor; no haunting claim is implied."]}],"name":"Melmont","aliases":[],"type":"GHOST_TOWN","type_label":"Ghost Town","cats":["GHOST_TOWN"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Historic settlement and ghost-town heritage.","full_desc":"Melmont is a ghost town in Melmont, Washington. Historic settlement and ghost-town heritage. It sits in the archive under ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. Access details are unverified — research before visiting. The dossier keeps the place and the story in the same record — which is what the archive is for.","address":null,"city":"Melmont","county":null,"state":"Washington","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":null,"lon":null,"coord_kind":null,"status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":"Tourism page reports Fairfax Bridge closure; verify current trail access. Buildings are not authorized for entry.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Pass 1 discovery. Inclusion is for ghost-town heritage; no haunting claim is implied. Parcel access and coordinates remain unverified.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":49.3,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Coal town founded in 1900. Melmont's history is documented — boom, bust, and desertion all on record, the lore layered on top. Media accounts document it — reported history rather than legend. The record appears in 'Discover Washington Ghost Towns'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Discover Washington Ghost Towns","url":"https://stateofwatourism.com/ghost-towns-of-washington-state/","publisher":"State of Washington Tourism","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Discover Washington Ghost Towns","url":"https://stateofwatourism.com/ghost-towns-of-washington-state/","publisher":"State of Washington Tourism","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}