Monte Cristo is located at the headwaters of the South Fork Sauk River in eastern Snohomish County.

The town is connected via a trail to the Mountain Loop Highway, which continues west to Granite Falls and north to Darrington.

In the early summer of 1889 Joseph Pearsall saw glittering deposits and traced them north to Seventysix Gulch and the area that became Monte Cristo.

In the fall of 1891 a narrow wagon road called the Wilmans or Pioneer Trail was completed from Sauk City on the Skagit River to Monte Cristo, allowing access from the north.

A key stop on this road was the trading post at Orient, Washington, at the North and South forks of the Sauk River.

Mining interests Thomas Ewing and George W. Grayson, then miner Edward Blewett, Judge Hiram G. Bond of Denver and New York City, and Seattle publisher Leigh S. J.

[2] Elaborate cable-bucket aerial tramways were built over Mystery Ridge for hauling ore to the town site, carrying as much as 230 tons every day.

Other problems such as metallic impurities at the Monte Cristo concentrator and the Everett smelter led to the boom collapsing.

[7] That same year, a nonprofit group called Monte Cristo Preservation Association stepped in to save and restore the historical site.

[8] Very few original structures are still standing, but the four-mile-long road (as noted in driving directions)[9] into town remains popular with hikers and mountain bikers.

The bridge remained standing, however hikers and mountain bikers now either have to ford the river or cross over fallen trees in order to continue onto the old town-site from the Barlow Pass entry.