Follow the road to Rimini

HELENA – An unexceptional fate for Rimini would have been what so many old Montana mining towns have experienced, a gradual fade to obscurity.

And while it's true not much remains of the town — founded in the gold boom of 1864 as one of the state's oldest towns — Rimini keeps popping into history.

The town shares its name with an Italian city but likely was named for Francesca da Rimini in the opera Dante's Inferno. The town centered on a silver lode (although gold, zinc and lead were mined in the surrounding hills, too), and crashed with the silver price in the 1890s. Some gold mining continued until petering out in about the 1920s after more than $7 million worth of minerals had been pulled out of the mountains.

Then during World War II, the ghost town was home to Camp Rimini, a dog-training center. The military took over an old Civilian Conservation Corps camp to train sled dogs and mushers to invade Nazi-occupied Norway, a mission that never happened.

Instead, the teams performed search-and-rescue missions after planes crashed in the Arctic.

The camp was home to about 140 people and 1,000 dogs sharing barracks, a headquarters building and a veterinarian hospital.

"It's all gone, all torn down," said Dave Armstrong, of Helena, who was stationed at the camp during WWII told the Tribune in 2013.

Once a year, Rimini knows again the sound of barking dogs and sled runners swooshing through the snow. The camp often serves as the starting point for the Race to the Sky sled dog race.

The military returned to Rimini in 1998, when a Malmstrom Air Force Base explosive ordinance disposal unit came to Rimini to look for booby traps at the Rimini compound of Russell Weston, a former mental patient, shot and killed two guards at the U.S. Capitol.

Rimini has a few year-round residents and a few more in the summer. The town has old cabins and stores, a schoolhouse

To find Rimini, follow Montana Highway 12 west toward MacDonald Pass. Look for the sign to Rimini and follow the dirt road, which is undergoing construction, into the mountains.

You'll drive along Tenmile Creek past the Moose Creek Campground, a picnic area and trailhead that connects with the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail and a former Forest Service ranger station from 1907 (now available for rent).

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Inbody at kinbody@greatfallstribune.com. Follow her on Twitter at @GFTrib_KInbody.