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.
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