Nye County, NV

A: Central Nevada, the Chicago Cubs, William McKinley.

Q: Name 3 entities that reached their zenith a century ago.

Tonopah (pop. 2,627) and Goldfield (440) are the two “major” settlements in what’s conventionally if erroneously labeled Central Nevada. The seats of their respective counties, the towns sit 27 miles apart on one of the emptiest stretches of an empty road. When the silver mines were at their busiest, Goldfield was Nevada’s largest city; 20,000 strong, and influential enough to host what was then the biggest boxing title fight in history. (The lightweight bout lived up to the hype, too: former champ Joe Gans took 42 rounds to regain his belt from Oscar “Battling” Nelson.) Today, the largely abandoned town serves as the gateway to the more prestigious Tonopah. This area holds the distinction of being farther away from an interstate highway than anywhere else in the United States.

If you couldn't tell from the picture, a mucker shovels ore or rock into the mine cars

Tonopah is so small that the high school plays 8-man football (3-man offensive line, and typically 2 running backs and 2 tight ends; 3-3-2 on defense.) We unwittingly visited on the biggest day of the year – the day Tonopah High (Home of the Muckers) hosts its cross-county rival from 60 miles up the road, and our next scheduled stop, Round Mountain. The students formed a chain across the main drag and screamed something unintelligible outside our hotel room in the middle of the night, then disassembled to enjoy Tonopah’s world-renowned nightlife.

We set sail for Round Mountain, but first, an irresistible detour: 40 miles out of our way, the somewhat adjacent hamlets of Belmont and Manhattan.

The major (only) paved road heading north out of Tonopah is State Route 376, which passes through Round Mountain and terminates in Austin, more on which later. Past the makeshift rodeo grounds outside of Tonopah, and yet another abandoned mine, sits the unmarked and often unpaved State Highway 82, whose only purpose is to ferry the curious into and out of the semi-retired mining camp of Belmont. Not only is the distance to the nearest gas greater than the distance from New York City to Delaware, you’ve got to travel on some challengingly graded roads to access said gas.

You can't get away from politics

At a gaudy 7600’ above sea level, Belmont is yet another claimant to the title of erstwhile biggest or 2^nd-biggest city in Nevada. The town claimed 15,000 people during its 1870s heyday, and an inexact 2-digit number today. The usual criterion for judging ghost towns seems to be level of preservation, and by that standard, Belmont qualifies. A 21^st century Catholic church sits near the summit of Cemetery Hill, Belmont’s highest point. The church is so tiny that from a distance it looks like an unusually pious travel kiosk. In a town with barely enough residents to fill the rosters for a Papists vs. Reformists basketball game, the Catholics understandably invite other denominations to hold services on the premises.

The featured attraction in Belmont is the brick courthouse, which was in use when Belmont was the seat of Nye County – a title ceded to Tonopah in 1905. The courthouse is a state park, and ostensibly open to the public, but the padlocked doors suggest otherwise.

A detailed tour of Belmont, including one of the two cemeteries, takes about 20 minutes. This leaves ample time to find a more inventive way to the next stop. Rather than retrace State Highway 82 the 26 miles back to its confluence at State Route 376, we took the Explorer through the Forest Service roads to the one remaining settlement between Belmont and Round Mountain – Manhattan.

The grandiose name was no accident, nor was this Manhattan’s failure to eclipse its New York counterpart. Founded in 1867, Manhattan now claims 124 residents, none of whom were visible this day. Manhattan is also the only place in rural Nevada where the political yard signs indicated any notable support for incumbent U.S. Senator Harry Reid. If our trip counts as an unscientific poll, Sharron Angle can begin measuring the drapes for her office in the Dirksen Building.

Birdseye view of the Boulder Dam

This week, an ambitious 3-day trip through a few of the ghost towns and apparition-towns we haven’t yet seen, or seen enough of, in Nevada. So many of them that it warrants multiple posts. More tomorrow.

There are several names for this underappreciated, undertraveled part of the continent – the Intermountain West, the Great Basin, the Mormon Corridor, America’s Outback. Visitors, even from surrounding states, rarely appreciate how sparse and desolate this mysterious land really is.

We headed northwest out of Las Vegas on U.S. Highway 95, which connects Canada to Mexico. Fifty years into the interstate era, 95 remains one of the few U.S. routes that hasn’t seen its traffic decrease, largely because it never carried that much to begin with.

Nevada has 3 congressional districts. NV-1 is urban Las Vegas and NV-3 is suburban Las Vegas, meaning that the remaining one is the largest district in the lower 48 (excluding the at-large district coextensive with the entire state of Montana, and even that one is slightly more densely populated than NV-2.)

Las Vegas is unusual among major metropolitan areas in that its sprawl has crisp, unmistakable boundaries. The city doesn’t consist of a central business district of skyscrapers, giving way to low-rises, circumscribed by tract homes and then surrounded by farms. Instead, it’s a populated mass that borders sagebrush which immediately disappears into the horizon.

U.S. 95’s desolation starts in central Clark County and continues throughout the entirety of its Nevada run. The towns are irregular, both in their spacing and in their character – Indian Springs, which hosts a newly christened Air Force base and a prison. Amargosa Valley, an arid crossroads with no visible residential population, and home to the least likely dairy in the world. Beatty, where two-lane U.S. 95 takes a 90º turn on main street and becomes a logical place to stop and find a place to eat; the wonderfully named Sourdough Saloon. In most other places, a restaurant with such a handle and décor (stapled currency on the walls, mismatched chairs, deep-fried menu) would be kitschy. Here, it’s mainstream.

Continue up the highway, and you’ll reach several junctions with dirt roads that lead south to the northern reaches of Death Valley. Miles to the north lie Yucca Mountain and the notorious Nevada Test Site. And yards to the north, a wayward mountain coyote.

Why did the coyote cross the road?

She was docile, and reasonably comfortable around humans – far more so than the urban coyotes found in Las Vegas’ outskirts. She appeared to be negotiating a crossing of the highway – waiting for the traffic, such as it was, to subside. Mountain coyotes typically hunt in pairs, leading one to wonder whether this one was searching for food, her partner, or perhaps her litter. We checked a nearby culvert for cubs, and found nothing. The coyote trotted haphazardly, neither avoiding human contact nor going out of her way to embrace it. She posed for a few photographs, avoided the desultory 18-wheelers speeding by, then continued with whatever quest she was on before being so rudely interrupted.

A century late and a dollar short

The End is Nye