One of the West’s many mining ghost towns is ready for you to explore.
The Old West is full of abandoned towns. Many were just stops on the railroad, no longer needed (like Kelso, California) or mining towns that ran out of ore. Rhyolite, Nevada is one of these mining ghost towns.
The town began in early 1905, much later than many of the ghost towns of the West. First, Rhyolite was just mining camps of prospectors searching the nearby Bullfrog Hills. Gold was found in these hills, so began the gold rush. People rushed to the camps and built a town to support the mining operation, as was often the case (like the famous Tombstone, Arizona).
Rhyolite started as a two-miner camp and within two weeks, it boasted a population of 1,200, 2,500 by midyear 1905. Population may have reached as high as 10,000. A year after gold was found in those hills, the town had 50 saloons, 35 gambling tables, brothels, 19 lodging houses, 16 restaurants, 6 barbers, a public bath house, and a weekly newspaper.
They found gold in them hills.
By 1907, Rhyolite was a truly modern town. It had concrete sidewalks (some of which still survive), electricity, running water and telephone lines. The town now had a hospital, a school, train station, three banks, and even an opera house.
The Cook Bank Building in 1908.
The Cook Bank Building in 2018, a hundred years later.
The downfall, however, started as soon as 1908. The mine was failing and closed in 1911. After that, everything started falling apart. Not much income was coming into the town. The miners were unemployed and simply left to find new jobs. The post office closed in 1913, the last train left the station in 1914, and the electricity was cut off in 1916. By 1920, there were only 14 people left in Rhyolite. The last resident died in 1924.
Only a few buildings remain in Rhyolite today. Many buildings became a source of building materials for other towns and camps. Whole buildings were moved to Beatty, a town only a few miles away and the only one to survive the gold rush.
Why don’t we now explore what remains of the town of Rhyolite, shall we?
Near the parking lot is the old awesome truck.
Most of the town lies in ruins, but the Bottle House was restored in 1925 for a movie, The Air Mail. There are around 50,000 bottles embedded in the adobe of that house.
From there you can either walk to the ruins or drive. I’m lazy, so I drove.
One of the larger ruins is the old schoolhouse.
This was probably a storefront. The inscription at the top reads “HD & LD Porter 1906”.
Tourism in this area of Nevada turned big in the 1920s, especially with Death Valley National Park only a few miles away. In the 1930s, a gas station was built here using this old Union Pacific caboose.
Which is awesome inside by the way, just watch your step because part of the floor is missing.
The old train station closed in 1914. Tourism opened it up again in 1937. It became the Rhyolite Ghost Casino, which was later turned into a small museum and curio shop that stayed around until the 1970s.
The Rhyolite Ghost Casino sign is still there, which was painted over the train station sign. This led to some confusion while I was there. It all makes sense now.
The buildings that survived are pretty scattered. This storefront somehow has survived but I’m wondering if this building didn’t come later.
The inside sure screams hantavirus though.
Near the edge of the town is this house. I can’t seem to date it. It seemed a little too modern on the inside to be from the early 1900s.
The wainscoting just doesn’t seem right. The house may have housed casino workers at a later time.
In addition, this car was definitely left here at a later date, but still awesome.
The ruins of the Overbury Building and Jewelry store really highlights what we have lost of Rhyolite in just the last 30 years. I found a website that has photos taken of Rhyolite a while back and a couple show that that the ruins of this building had a second story with a large window in the back of the building. We are losing ghost towns.
On that note, to the cemetery we go, which is south of the main settlement and down a very questionable dirt road. Not much remains of the early tombs (probably made of wood) and it was surprising to find some more recent burials here.
Old wooden tombstones.
Not that many left unfortunately.
While the poor miners would have had wooden tombstones, the businessmen had some nice ones.
Daniel G. Kennedy born in Novia Scotia died here in 1905.
Rhyolite is a pretty awesome place to visit. It turned out much more awesome than I thought it was going to be. It’s an easy diversion on your way to Death Valley National Park which is only a few miles away.
Check out my next update where I visit Death Valley National Park!
