Tag: roadtovegas

This is Part 4 in the Road to Vegas series. To read the other installments, click here.

Perched in a wide valley at the south end of Walker Lake is the town of Hawthorne. If you're making the drive from Carson City, and following along with this web series, Hawthorne will be the first town you run into that's actually located along Hwy 95 itself. Walker Lake is also the last glimpse you'll have of water for a very long time, so enjoy it while you can.

The origins of Hawthorne lie not in mining or agriculture, like so many of Nevada's other towns, but in the railroad. In 1880, the Carson and Colorado Railroad was being built from Mound House down to the Owens Valley in California. The Carson and Colorado was meant to replace the wagon roads that criss-crossed the area and make it easier to haul ore out of all the small mining towns that had been springing up along the Nevada-California border. Several of these wagon roads intersected at the south end of Walker Lake, so it was decided this would be a good place to build a division and distribution point for the railroad. Legend has it that the work crews building the railroad turned their pack mules loose to fend for themselves during the winter of 1880-81, and when they returned the next spring they found that the herd had settled itself into the most sheltered part of the valley to survive the cold winter. If it was good enough for the mules it was good enough for the humans, so the townsite of Hawthorne was laid out on the same spot.

However the site was picked, the town quickly took hold. Hawthorne grabbed the title of Esmeralda county seat in 1883, but later lost it in 1907 to the boom town of Goldfield. Four years later a new county, Mineral County, was carved out of the northern half of Esmeralda County, and Hawthorne regained its county seat status and reopened its court house.

Through these years, though, the population of the town never rose above a few hundred. The Carson and Colorado Railroad was sold to Southern Pacific in 1900, and the rail line was rerouted away from the town. The town survived by being a supply center for all of the small mining operations in the area, but Hawthorne was always in danger of shriveling up and blowing off the map.

Until the 1920s, that is. Because in 1926 a disaster happened on the opposite side of the country that would forever alter the destiny of the town. That was the year that the U.S. Naval Ammunition Depot in Lake Denmark, New Jersey exploded, killing 21 people and sending raining shrapnel into the surrounding communities. After this disaster, the Navy decided that maybe the middle of a heavily populated area wasn't the best place to stockpile all of their ammunition, so they set off in search of a more desolate location in the vast expanses of the West. The place they finally chose was tiny little Hawthorne, and in 1930 the first shipment of high explosives arrived at the new Hawthorne Naval Ammunition Depot. After that Hawthorne became a military town, and its entire reason for existence shifted to supporting the Depot. At the height of World War II over 5,000 people were employed at the Depot, supplying munitions for the entire American war effort. The population of the town itself topped out at 13,000.

The years since World War II have seen a decline in the importance of the Hawthorne Depot, but even after all these years it is still in operation. In 1977 control of the Depot was transferred to the army, and nowadays it's mostly civilian personnel, working for the Day & Zimmermann Hawthorne Corporation, that keep watch over the ammunition buried in the desert. The bunkers dotting the landscape surrounding Hawthorne are just one of the oddities you'll run across on The Road To Vegas. Now, on to the pictures!

This is what's most visible as you approach Hawthorne, long rows of military buildings filling up the valley.

They stretch off into the distance, punctuated by an occasional tree or water tower.

The actual ammunition bunkers stretch way up the alluvial plains, clustered in groups and connected by dirt roads.

The bunkers are all the same. Rectangular mounds of dirt, with a notch cut through them and a doorway giving access to the storage areas within.

There are a few of these larger facilities scattered throughout the valley as well. The notches are cut to allow train tracks to enter the bunker.

One of the oddest sights on the whole Road to Vegas is this sign, advertising an "Undersea Warfare Center" on an access road. A submarine base in the Hawthorne desert?

This is the main gate to the Depot, a collection of offices and administration buildings that is actually located on the other side of town from the bunkers. Apparently the town golf course is also through these gates.

The Hawthorne Ordnance Museum, located on Hawthorne's main street, houses several large guns and a collection of ammunition dating back to the early 20th century.

The El Capitan casino is Hawthorne's second-largest employer, located right at a bend in the highway. This gaudy blue facade doesn't look to have been updated in several decades, and I imagine the interior hasn't either.

But the El Capitan still brings in the customers because of its size and its prominence. Only in Tonopah will you find another casino this size along the Road to Vegas, so if travelers are planning to stop and do some gambling along the way, the odds are good they're going to do it here. Add a bar, restaurant, and over 100 motel rooms, and the El Capitan becomes an oasis in the desert.

Not that the El Capitan doesn't have competition. It's not the only food or lodging in town, after all. The sign at Maggie's promises good burgers, good fries, and ten-gallon hats for all.

Wong's Chinese Food is located in this little hut on J Street.

And Jack's Cafe is sure to get your attention with its lavender and orange color scheme. Whether the "Mexican American Seafood" that is served at Jack's lives up to the promises of its decor is another matter.

The Sierra Station proclaims itself to be a booze and suds emporium, and despite its gloomy exterior it exhorts the weary traveler to "Stop On In!"

Joe's Tavern is painted a very patriotic red white and blue, with a strip of stars along its roofline.

Next door to Joe's Tavern, this building proclaims Hawthorne to be "America's Patriotic Home".

There is no shortage of lodging in Hawthorne either. The main drag is littered with a series of small postwar motels, each of them hoping you choose not to stay at the El Capitan but spend a night with them instead. The Lovedays Inn offers you kitchenettes and an empty parking lot.

The Hawthorne Motel has two signs. When the blue one became unreadable, they just put up the yellow one.

The Anchor Motel is not only under new management, it's also within convenient walking distance of the Hawthorne Ordnance Museum.

The Sand and Sage Lodge is not even located on the main highway, but they have put up this sign so everyone knows they're there.

The Holiday Lodge appears to actually be two stories high, as well as openly advertising such modern amenities as color TVs and telephones.

The Tippin Appliances building is wholly uninteresting, like it's actively designed to make you look in the opposite direction. But the sign is what's interesting here, with 40-year-old logos for RCA, GE, and Propane.

Groom Masters grooming salon is located right at the heart of town. What's funniest about this building is the sign in the window that says, "Truckers Welcomed." I'd like to see the demographics on how many truck drivers stop by to get their poodles groomed.

This strip mall lies in the shadow of the El Capitan. Here you can find the Hawthorne Mini Mart, a smoke shop, Diego's Mexican Food, Wee Hawk Pawn, and the Happy Buddha Thai and Chinese Cuisine.

At the edge of town, across the street from the McDonald's (which probably does more business than every other restaurant I mentioned here combined), you find this art installation. Bomb casings turned into windmills, which actually rotate with the breeze.

And just down the road is more military-style art. Hundreds of bomb casings, stuck ass-up in the sand next to the highway. This installation also marks the townsite of Babbitt, a community that was built during World War II to house civilian employees of the Depot. Babbitt was comprised of an orderly grid of streets, named for U.S. aircraft carriers, and lined with identical duplex units. After the Korean War the need declined for the extra housing Babbitt provided, and over the next few decades the community was slowly dismantled, street by street. The last residents moved out in 1987, and now there is nothing left but a series of ghost streets in the desert, dotted by concrete foundations.

More reading on Hawthorne can be found at nevadaweb.com and ghosttowns.com, and the Hawthorne Live blog, updated frequently by Nevada Mike.

This is Part 3 in the Road to Vegas series. To read the other installments, click here.

As you travel west to east across Nevada, you'll come across one valley after another. First comes the Carson Valley, then the Smith Valley (which we talked about in Part 2), and the third valley you'll run into is the Mason Valley. Like the Smith Valley, the Mason Valley is a rich agricultural land due to the presence of the Walker River. The river runs along the west slope of the valley, and it has been tapped to irrigate most of the valley. Here is also where the East Walker and West Walker Rivers finally meet, bringing double the water in and making the valley extra rich and fertile.

The Mason Valley was first settled in the 1850s by a rancher named Mason, and it didn't take long for others to follow and start cultivating the valley. A small town soon formed at the center of the valley, and one of its features was a saloon with thatched walls that served a particularly nasty form of fire water. This whiskey was some of the worst to be had anywhere in the West, and the locals soon took to calling it poison. Or, as they shortened it to, "pizen". In no time at all, the little town took on the inauspicious name of Pizen Switch, and held it for several years. But as the town grew and a better class of people settled in the valley, everyone was soon clamoring for a new name. In 1879 the community agreed to change the name of the town to Greenfield, to honor the green fields that filled the valley, and the name Pizen Switch was never to be spoken again.

Soon after that, the railroad came to the Mason Valley. It was the Carson and Colorado line, an offshoot of the Virginia and Truckee that ran from Mound House, down south through Lyon and Esmeralda counties, and eventually terminated in the Owens Valley south of Bishop. The Mason Valley was seen as little more than a speed bump along the way, though, so instead of laying the rails close to the town of Greenfield, the railroad instead stayed at the north end of the valley, only stopping once at the town of Wabuska. The residents of Greenfield didn't take kindly to this snub, and they thought that as the heart of the Mason Valley they should have a railroad too. Or at least a branch line, running down from Wabuska south to the farms and ranches surrounding Greenfield. They petitioned Henry Yerington, who was the superintendent of both the V&T and the C&C, to get rails laid over the 12 mile route that would connect them to the main line, but he was deaf to to their pleas.

So the residents of Greenfield decided they had one weapon left in their arsenal, and that was flattery. In 1894 the community united as one and changed the name of the town once again, this time agreeing on the name Yerington. All traces of Greenfield were removed, from the post office, the hotels, the businesses, and they all were replaced with Yerington. Surely this gesture would get the attention of the man with the power over the railroad, and he'd have to build them a branch line. But, it didn't work. Their efforts went unnoticed, or at least unappreciated enough that the rail line was never built. But the town stuck with the name of Yerington, and it's kept it until this day.

The name change in 1894 came too late to make any difference anyway. By that time the Carson and Colorado Railroad, then only 13 years old, had fallen on hard times and was barely making any money for its owners. A few years later the line was bought by Southern Pacific, and after that Mr. Yerington no longer had the power to build a branch line even if he wanted to.

That doesn't mean the town of Yerington never got a railroad, though. Early in the 20th century several old copper mines on the west side of the valley were reopened, and with the modern machinery available it was thought these mines could turn a pretty profit. So the branch line that the town had so desperately sought was finally built, opened in 1910 as the Nevada Copper Belt Railway. Also, around the same time Yerington won another victory, wresting the county seat of Lyon County away from the town of Dayton. Along with this change came a new court house in Yerington, and the money from the mines started a new prosperity for the whole valley.

Over the last hundred years, the Mason Valley has kept much of its rural character. Sprawling farms still stretch across the valley, and Yerington is still a fairly small town, although there have been changes. They have added a few modern supermarkets and fast food joints around town. The railroad went out of business in 1947, as it became more economical to haul stuff by truck. And the mines moved to open pit techniques to extract every bit of ore out of the ground. But Yerington, and the valley that surrounds it, is still one of the most fertile garden spots in Nevada.

Let's see some pictures.

Some of the rich farmland in the Mason Valley.

It may look like a quiet country lane, but this is actually Hwy 208, one of two main arteries through the valley.

A few sheep hanging out in a field.

The Lyon County Courthouse, built around 1907 after the county seat moved from Dayton.

The Lyon County Museum.

This old Rexall Drug store is still operating in downtown Yerington.

Hammond Furniture operates downtown too. I only took this picture because my wife's maiden name is Hammond.

A nice downtown block.

There are a couple of large casinos in the heart of Yerington. This is Casino West.

And this is Dini's Lucky Club, still owned former Nevada State Assemblyman Joe Dini.

It's also home to Giuseppe's Steak House.

The Subway is a little outdated, but that doesn't mean the food's not good.

The legacy of Pizen Switch hasn't disappeared entirely. Here you see it commemorated in the Pizen Switch Laundry Mat and Car Wash.

On the west side of the valley we have the Anaconda Mine. You can see the tailings piled up in the distance. This was the largest copper mining operation in the valley during the 20th century, but the techniques they used back then have left quite a mess for the current generations to clean up. It seems that the copper mining process they used left behind some byproducts you may have heard of, namely arsenic, mercury, lead, and uranium. These nasty minerals were just dumped into ponds, where they could either seep into the ground, potentially contaminating the groundwater, or dry up and blow away in a dust storm. So now the EPA is on the case, trying to figure the best way to clean the place up and decontaminate it. Meanwhile, the residents of Yerington have found themselves having to deal with an entirely new kind of "pizen".

My brief history of Yerington and the Mason Valley was cobbled together from a few different websites. Yerington.net, Nevadaweb.com, and Masonvalleychamber.org to name a few. Many thanks to them all, and if you're interested in learning more, go click around.

Coming up next, Part 4 takes us to Hawthorne, home of the largest ammunition dump in the world.

This is Part 2 in the Road to Vegas series. To read the other installments, click here.

Just a few minutes away from Topaz Lake, Hwy 208 descends into the Smith Valley. The Smith Valley, like most valleys in Western Nevada, is full of green pasture land as far as you can see. It's also home to the "twin cities" of Smith and Wellington, two small farming communities along the highway.

The Smith Valley was first settled because it was along the road to Aurora, which during the 1860s was a bustling mining town that rivaled Virginia City. Wagons and stagecoaches that were traveling between Carson City and Aurora would have to travel through the Smith Valley, and several way stations were established in Wellington to service the weary travelers.

But the Smith Valley had another asset, the Walker River which provided a steady stream of water flowing through the valley. Soon the river was tapped for irrigation, and the Smith Valley started the agricultural life that it still enjoys today. Eventually Aurora became a ghost town, and the steady stream of wagons gave way to a steady stream of cars on their way to Las Vegas.

Coming down the hill from Topaz Lake, the green of the Smith Valley fills your vision.

The first town you come to is Wellington, nestled up against the foothills. The S.V. stands for Smith Valley, obviously, and is maintained by students at Smith Valley High School.

Rosie's Place restaurant and mini mart shares a building with the Hair Artistry hair salon.

This bright house is on the outskirts of Wellington.

Much of the valley is taken up with large agricultural fields like this.

In the center of the valley is the very small town of Smith. The building on the right is the Smith Post Office.

A wider view of Smith shows you just about the whole town. It's really tiny.

Outside of Smith, the road follows along by more pasture land.

Most of the residents of the Smith Valley don't live in either of the towns, they live on farms or in the "suburbs". Large-parcel residential areas sprawl all along the west side of the valley, up against the mountains.

Check back soon for Part 3 of the Road to Vegas, dealing with Yerington.

This is Part 1 in the Road to Vegas series. To read the other installments, click here.

So last month we made a quick trip to Las Vegas to visit family. Being the penny pinchers that we are, we decided to make the drive, rather than paying for airline tickets and a rental car. Of course, with the price of gas the way it is, we probably could have bought a couple of tickets for the price of filling our tank. But, I think we still made out in the end.

So anyway, since we drove down there, we got to experience the many joys and wonders of US 95, the main North-South artery in Nevada. This road traverses the state from the Oregon border all the way down, almost to the "tip" of Nevada at Cal Nev Ari. But the stretch between Reno and Vegas is the busiest and most-traveled, and that's the part we drove. Twice.

And so, since you can probably find millions and millions of other blog posts about Las Vegas out there, I won't be focusing on that part of the trip. Instead, over the next few days (or weeks), we'll take a look at the road to Vegas, US 95, and all the sights and small towns you bump into along the way. So that way if you ever have to make the drive, you'll know what you're getting yourself into. Or, I've you've already made it, you'll probably find something familiar here, as well as something you've missed and you'll have to look for next time.

I'm going to make this into a multi-part series, and I can only hope with my proclivity for procrastination that I actually manage to finish the whole thing. I'm kind of setting myself up for failure doing it this way. This first part will focus on all the miscellaneous little sights we saw on our way down there, then the next however many parts will be devoted to all the small towns on the way. So ideally, when it's all done, this will be a fairly complete guide to US 95, from Carson to Vegas.

This is probably a familiar sight to many of you. Holbrook Junction, just north of Topaz Lake, is where we turned off of Hwy 395 and diverted onto the road to Las Vegas.

Outside of the Smith Valley, Hwy 208 passes through Wilson Canyon and hugs the Walker River. It's like a mini Grand Canyon through here.

Once you pass Yerington, this is what the road mostly looks like. Hot, dry, and flat, a series of long straightaways slicing through the sagebrush plains.

This water tower marks the town of Schurz. Schurz is located entirely within the Walker River Indian Reservation, and the majority of residents are Native American.

Right outside of Schurz, at the intersection of Hwys 95 and 95A, is Rockchuck. Fireworks may be largely illegal in Nevada, but the Indians have an exemption and there are quite a few fireworks stands here in Schurz. I bet they love the Independence Day season, as it gives them a diversion from their main business of selling rocks.

Also in Schurz is this cozy fixer-upper.

The last big lake you see on the way to Vegas is Walker Lake. This is the end of the Walker River; the river dumps into the lake, but there's no outlet so all the water just evaporates from here. Hwy 95 follows along the west side of the lake, with a few barren camping and picnic areas along the shoreline.

Walker Lake is one of the last remnants of ancient Lake Lahontan, which during the last ice age covered many of the valleys in Western Nevada. The waters have been slowly receding over the last 12,000 years, leaving Walker Lake as an oasis in the middle of the Great Basin. The lake level has been in extra sharp decline since the arrival of Americans in the West, though. The Walker River keeps being diverted for irrigation, causing less and less water to come into the lake every year. One day it might just dry up completely, or at least be reduced to a smallish puddle.

Beyond Walker Lake, there's very little water, so all the settlements are small places. Almost every town between Hawthorne and Las Vegas was originally built as a mining camp; some of the larger towns are still populated, and we'll be looking at those in future installments. But there are plenty of ghost towns along this road as well. The older ones have almost completely disappeared, while some more recent mining operations have still left pretty substantial ruins behind. This one is not too far outside of Hawthorne, perched on a small hill close to the road.

And not all the mines have dried up, either. Some of them, like this place further to the south, are still very much in operation. This mine is run by Cind-R-Lite, and they're digging up this old cinder cone to get decorative rock to feed the landscaping needs of Las Vegas' building boom.

This is the Rhodes Salt Marsh. Once there was a fairly large salt mining operation here, with a town and even a railroad spur off of the Carson and Colorado line. Now all that's left is this wooden tower at the edge of the dry lake bed.

The Columbus Salt Marsh is just a few miles south of Rhodes, and it was also the site of a large borax mining operation. Now there's nothing left but the views.

At the intersection of Hwys 95 and 6 is the burned-out shell of what used to be the town of Coaldale Junction. Coaldale is a pretty recent ghost town, probably abandoned within the last 10-15 years.

There are still the ruins here of an old truck stop, complete with restaurant, bar, motel, and gas pumps. The entire town was listed up for sale recently; I'm guessing there haven't been any takers.

Most of the drive is pretty desolate, but the mountains along the way can certainly be striking.

Dust devils are common sights in the middle of the desert. These little mini tornadoes can be seen from miles away, sweeping their way across the landscape.

And not all the dust devils are lurking off in the distance. This big one parked itself by the side of the road, hoping to snare a passing pickup.

Another common sight in Central Nevada are the brothels. 11 of Nevada's counties allow legal prostitution, so this road between Reno and Vegas has several places of ill repute scattered along the roadside. Here is the Cottontail Ranch, which seems to have fallen on hard times. The building is all boarded up, and a couple of very dejected bikers were sitting in the parking lot. Even the website is offline.

The Shady Lady Ranch is further south and more set back from the highway. It announces itself with this small sign by the road.

The funniest thing I saw on the whole trip was this UPS truck in the parking lot of the Shady Lady Ranch (see the closeup). He's just dropping off a package, right?

Angel's Ladies is just on the outskirts of Beatty, and somehow thinks a broken-down airplane will make the place more charming.

But the Playmate Ranch wins the prize for being most obviously just a mobile home plunked down in the desert.

Speaking of mobile homes, this one keeps tires on their roof. For safekeeping, maybe?

This old burned-out gas station near Scotty's Junction is for sale. It's a steal, folks!

In the Amargosa Valley, you see the sign for the Big Dune.

Turns out that's the turnoff for Amargosa Dunes, a local hotspot for ATV riding. You can see the dune off in the distance.

Along the way, we bumped into Juan Valdez. He's a long way from the mountains of Columbia, that's for sure. We actually saw him twice, once on the way down on Friday, then again on Monday. In that time he had walked about a hundred miles. I think he should be to Vegas by now.

And finally, we saw this cell phone tower cleverly disguised as a pine tree. The ruse might have worked, if only there were another pine tree within a hundred miles of here.

Check back later for Part 2, where we start looking at all the towns along the road. For a full list of all the installments so far, check here.