Tag: ruralnevada

Photographer Michael Escalera visited the Nevada desert and took some photos around the ghost town of Rhyolite and the almost-ghost-town of Goldfield. There's some great stuff there, including a look inside the Goldfield Hotel, one of the most opulent hotels in the state when it was built. Good stuff.

The BLM has just launched a website with over 60,000 of their images available for download and use, all part of the public domain. The photos are taken from their vast collections, mostly color, some black and white, some older, some newer. For the most part they are photos of the West; Nevada, California, Idaho. Browsing the through the collection I see a lot of landscapes and photos of flowers. There is a group of pictures of Burning Man. Pictures of grazing cattle. And photos from the cultural sites that the BLM manages. For the most part, at least the Nevada pictures are all of rural areas. There's not a lot of pictures here of town, and the few buildings I've seen seem to be deserted shacks.

If you have the patience to comb through an endless pile of pictures of the West, you should check out the collection. Hat tip to Gina Lauer for bringing this to my attention, as well as a story in the Idaho Statesman about it.

Photo by Flickr user desert4wd

If you're looking to get away from civilization, and I mean really away, head out to Belmont on August 9th for the 5th Annual Belmont Roundup, a night of music, poetry, and storytelling. It's taking place at the Belmont Saloon, and will feature The Peavine Pickers, as well as an open jam session for anyone who wants to bring a guitar.

If you've never been to Belmont, just keep driving until you reach the end of the earth. Then go another fifteen miles, and you'll find it. Either that or go to Tonopah, and head north. About 270 miles from here.

Belmont is an old mining town (what town in Nevada isn't?), and has nearly dried up except for a few stragglers who keep the town running. The Belmont Saloon is owned by a coworker of mine, who lives in the Carson area but heads out to the ends of Nevada every now and then to sling drinks for the three or four tourists who come through town. This jam session is just a fun way for him to drum up a little more business and get some of his friends out to the saloon.

Photo by Flickr user nevadadcnr

One of the main attractions in Belmont is the Belmont Courthouse, built in 1876 when Belmont was named the county seat of Nye County. Belmont didn't last, drying up and blowing away before the end of the century. But the courthouse still stands, strong as the day it was built, now protected as a state park. And aside from the courthouse, there are plenty of old ruins scattered around the town.

So if you're going to make a trip to Belmont, make sure to do it on the 9th, when there will actually be a few people in town!

Rich Moreno in Backyard Traveler has a list of Nevada roads that are far lonelier than Hwy 50, the supposed "loneliest road in America". Turns out the loneliest is actually State Route 121, with a whopping 10 cars per day.

The Backyard Traveler has an article on Nevada's Strange Place Names. If you've ever wondered about the origins of names like Weed Heights, Slim Creek, Adverse, Adaven, Jiggs, or Tobar, this is the article for you.

I'll even give you a freebie. Back in most of these old towns, one of the first buildings to be put up was a saloon. In one case, the proprietors of the new thirst parlor wanted to make it easy for patrons to find them. So they nailed a sign to the railroad depot that read "To Bar", with an arrow pointing the way. The next train that arrived, everyone saw the sign and thought that was the name of the town. And so it was.

Go read the article.

Update: Eric sends in a link to a history article on Tobar.

Thanks to the Mark Englebretson postcard collection that I received recently, I discovered that I had a bunch of old pictures of downtown Wells, which was ravaged by the earthquake yesterday. I posted one of them yesterday, but here are a few more. Now, understand that this was back during the absolute heyday of Wells, when the railroad was the way most people would enter town, and these buildings are right next to the tracks and the station. Ever since I-80 was built on the other end of town, this block has been dying a gruesome death from neglect, and many of the buildings had been deserted for years and on the verge of falling down anyway. This commercial row was actually listed as #4 on the list of Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places put out by Preserve Nevada in 2006. So watching downtown Wells be destroyed by an earthquake is like seeing an old man in a nursing home get food poisoning. The method is unexpected, but you knew the end was near.

There are also a few new pictures of the destruction, like this gallery from the RGJ.

Photo from Marilyn Newton of the RGJ

That photo shows the backside of these buildings here, revealing the extent of the destruction.

Photo by Flickr user RangerDanger!
Photo from RangerDanger! at Flickr

There's also a photo gallery online at the Nevada Appeal.

Wells, NV, got hit with a fairly big earthquake this morning, a 6.0 magnitude shaker. Early reports said that one or two buildings had been damaged, but as news organizations actually got out to the town to file first-hand reports, they found it was much worse than they had heard. The old downtown area, which consisted mostly of unreinforced brick buildings, is literally in a shambles. They say most of the buildings there will have to be torn down because they are beyond all hope of repair. Even the more modern buildings that make up the rest of the town sustained minor damage, like cracked walls, broken foundations, and toppled chimneys. The people of Wells are going to need a lot of strength to get through this one.

Photo by Flickr user RangerDanger!
Photo from RangerDanger! at Flickr

Nevada is ripe for earthquakes, so it's actually a bit of a surprise that we don't have them more often. There have only been five or six really big ones like this in recent memory. But if you look around at all the mountain ranges that criss-cross the state, each one of those mountains has a major fault line at its base. Fault lines run along the whole Eagle Valley, the whole Carson Valley, all over Reno, and just about everywhere in between. And each of those fault lines is capable of the "Big One", a magnitude 7.0 or larger that can come at any time. So I think we're really lucky that big earthquakes like this are rare, but our luck can't last forever. One day, it might be 50 years, or a hundred, or five hundred, but a big quake will hit Carson City one day too. The best we can do is be prepared.

Pictures of the Wells quake can be seen at the Elko Daily Free Press

If you'll remember, some weeks ago I wrote about an idea I had for a project to get out and photograph every one of Nevada's 266 Historical Markers. I even started a section on Carsonpedia gathering together the few of the markers that I've already photographed.

Well, this was an idea that was too good to be unique. Turns out someone else had the same idea, but more than just having the idea, he actually went out and did it. Nevada-Landmarks.com is his website, and on it you'll find many of the historical markers in the state. There are still several counties he hasn't hit yet, but you can tell from the depth of the site that he has spent some serious time criss-crossing the backroads of Nevada, hunting these markers down. I gotta tell you, I'm pretty damn jealous that he beat me to it.

Paul, who built the site and took all the pictures, also runs Sierra Life Photography. So he knows a thing or two about photographing the back country.

Hat tip to Forgotten Nevada on this one.

Ryan Jerz today has a trip report and photos from a trip out to the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in the middle of the desert. It's not uncommon to find an old ghost town in the middle of the Great Basin, but it's less common to find huge prehistoric fish fossilized into a remote hillside. At Berlin-Ichthyosaur you can see both!

Richard Moreno also wrote about Berlin-Ichthyosaur on his Backyard Traveler blog last spring.

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.