Tag: aurora

Rich Moreno at Backyard Traveler has a profile of the town of Aurora, the ghost town that even the ghosts have left. Aurora, down near the Hawthorne/Bridgeport area was one of the largest towns in Nevada in its time. It was a mining town that nearly rivaled Virginia City in size, over 10,000 people. It was close enough to the state border that both Nevada and California claimed it, and I think the residents even made a run for State Capital of Nevada. But the town never hit its Big Bonanza like Virginia City did, so it died out quickly. Now little remains of the town except for the cemetery and a few scattered foundations. And the town is nearly unreachable, located miles from any main highway at the end of a 4WD road.

Other links about Aurora:

http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/nv/aurora.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora,_Nevada
http://www.ghosttownexplorers.org/nevada/aurora/aurora.htm
http://www.forgottennevada.org/sites/aurora.html

There's a really great article by Jonni Hill at the Record Courier today about the cemetery at the ghost town of Aurora. Aurora is located a bit south of Hawthorne, in the middle of the Nevada desert, and was once a pretty good-sized city, one of the largest in the state. In fact, at one time Gardnerville was little more than a stage coach stop on the road from Carson to Aurora. But the only thing keeping the town alive was the mines, and when they died down so did Aurora. Now it's abandoned, and you need a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get there.

Some pictures of Aurora can be found here.