Rhyolite - a Nevada Ghost Town

Take US 95 north out of Las Vegas to Beatty. Turn left unto RT 374. The trip from Las Vegas to the most photographed of Nevada's ghost towns will take you about two hours.

The desert here is dotted with scrub cactus and tumbleweeds. Dust devils are frequent and will sometimes sweep the road in front of you with blinding sand storms. If you watch closely you will also see herds of wild horses and burros. These are descendents of the stock that was carelessly abadoned when the mining boom came to a sudden end.

When arriving in Rhyolite, you'll find the roads are well graded and the ruins are very accessible. The deep blue skies and surrounding mountains frame the buildings and make a stunning backdrop for photographs. Night shots are more dramatic and capture a sense of the ghost town spirit in a way a day shoot cannot.

Residents of nearby Beatty are hospitable and will answer any number of questions about their ancestors and the local ghost town.

A four star adventure for any photographer or traveler.

Quick Tips:

When traveling through the desert take a minimum of a gallon of water per person and other emergency supplies. Even US#95 is lightly traveled and a breakdown might leave you stranded for hours.

Wear hiking boots and be prepared to encounter the wild life. Snakes, scorpions, and other critters are abundant though mostly elusive.

Off roading is not suggested as the desert fatalites around the city of Vegas account for several deaths each summer. If you do intend to go off the main roads, file a trip plan with the hotel, take emergency supplies with you, and remember to stay with your vehicle if trouble does occur. This is the best way to insure that you will be rescued.

Best Way To Get Around:

Pickup trucks and SUV's are the best mode of travel, but the average car can easily handle the gravel roads in and around Rhyolite.

The Burro Inn is a bare-bones strip style motel. The service was friendly. The room was clean and the AC worked. Also, big bonus, the accept pets which is great if you happen to travel with the little annoying brown dog. Katie (LABD) gave it four stars.

Small table and chairs in the room gave us plenty of space to work when planning the rest of our trip.

The Burro Inn is one of the few establishments in Beatty. Having a lion's share of the tourist market does not equate to bad food or bad service. IN FACT: The down-home cookin' they advertise means just that. This is one place where you can order off the menu or ask for your own version and they will do their best to accommodate you. We had breakfast there and it was just like having grandma cook it. Small diner style area, next to the bar and casino slot machines, was filled with locals. Had a blast!

By now, you have figured out that Beatty is just a dot in the desert. While the Burro Inn isn't the only place in town, it is one of two casinos and the only place where Katie, the annoying little brown dog, was welcomed. People don't drive here from Vegas for the gambling, but, well, as long as you're here, why not? We played on the slot machines for an hour or so with the same $20 worth of quarters. If you want to see the rest of Nevada, Beatty is a good place to start.

Well, if you can imagine a 25 ft high kneeling woman, made of cinder blocks and painted bright pink, you can imagine whay this museum is like. It's like nothing else I've ever seen. The painted lady, a monument to Nevada's local residents, celebrates the working girls of the desert. Outside the county limits of Vegas and Reno, prostitution is not legal, but this is the only state in the country where it is not 'illegal.' This sculpture looks like the largest lego blocks you have ever seen (oh, and she's a natural blonde)

The other works here by the late Belgium artist, Charles Albert Szukalski (1945-2000) are better known and more widely photographed. The Last Supper is awe inspiring. Sheets of plaster that look like ghostly forms in a three dimensional version of DaVinci's Last Supper painting are larger than life.

Other sculputures include a ghost rider and his rust bicycle, a wooden woman of the desert suspended on a post, a desert nomad, and a prospector and his penguin.

This is one museum you will never forget. The impact of this work stays with you forever.

The ultimate in recycling and the only entirely preserved building in the town, is made of empty beer and whiskey bottles. The builder used beer and whiskey bottles like the average contractor would use bricks.

This small, but unique home, is a landmark and worthy of a stop. But, like the rest of Rhyolite, if you want to know the real history, you are going to have to stop in and chat with the locals. For information on the bottle house, I recommend the ROCK and GEM shop. There's only one in town. You won't have trouble finding it.

A great little store that didn't make the annoying little brown dog wait in the car.

At night, it's eerie. The car headlights gave off just enough light for focusing the 70-200 manual zoom lens. The photographs captured the essence of abandonment in its true spirit.

By day, the vast amount of desert surrounding the town, gives you a sense of how these towns must have appeared as the only source of food and entertainment to the lonely prospector.

The train station is relatively intact, even though a Union Pacific railcar sits abandoned nearby on a track that goes nowhere. Restoration is being done to keep this building from further deterioration with a hope that it will one day house a small local museum.

The other buildings in town, the hotel, the bank, the general store, etc, are just fronts and remnants. The roofs, floors, and much of the walls have long since crumbled away.

The road through town leads to mining interests, so it is gravel but well graded and easy to drive.

If Rhyolite looks familiar, maybe you've been watching too much MTV. It's been the back drop for a number of music video's including a nice whiney number by Alnis Morissette.

If your historical knowledge is based primarily upon old cowboy movies and television, you might be surprised to know that Rhyolite was built in 1906 and completely abandoned less than 20 years later.

Once again, cannot emphasize enough how necessary it is to take precautions by wearing hiking boots. The only residents still here are of the slithering, creeping, crawling, biting variety.