RHYOLITE
YESTERDAY & TODAY
Nevada's Ghost City
By
Gary
Speck
SEE Rhyolite
AND Gary (the author of this piece/website owner)
featured on Life after people
Episode #4
Tuesday, May
12, 2009 on the History Channel!!!
No visit to
Permanence appears to have turned fleeting! Today, of the three, only Tonopah still
breathes comfortably. It is the Nye County Seat, and maintains a population of
about 2000 folks. Goldfield still hangs in there as the county seat of
To set the mood for my first ghostly visit to this
wonderful old ghost in early December 1997, Nature and el Nino presented us
with a heavy fog and drizzle: a fog that socked in the entire
Rhyolite sits about four miles west of Beatty, and
about 1.5 miles north of State Highway 374. On the north side of the turnoff is
the massive Bullfrog Gold Mine, and to the south, across the highway, the
remains of huge settling ponds and tailing piles that were heap-leached before
the mine closed in 1999. A short distance up the road on the west is the
Bullfrog-Rhyolite cemetery, which we didn’t visit in 1997 due to lack of
visibility and not being able to find it!
I did not visit it in 2009. About 3/4 mile up the road is a side road
heading west past the ruins of Bullfrog, only 1/4 mile west and now home to
what in 2009, appears to be a large, recently constructed building that I was
told houses an artist colony.
Continuing up the hill, the road curves gently to
the right and in 1997 was home to a cluster of mobile homes and cabins fronted
with huge metal sculptures greeting the visitor. In 2009, those mobile homes
were gone and the cabins vacated, although a couple of the sculptures
remained as a welcome to town. Looking
north up the road toward the town itself as an eerie sensation either in the
fog or sunshine. The dark brooding hulks
of ruined buildings sit in a bowl at the base of mine-scarred hillsides. In 1997, the view was ethereal as the heavy
fog lifted just enough to bring the building ruins into focus. Before I could
stop and get a picture, the wet grey mist returned, again shrouding this
During my last visit in late February 2009, I was
part of an exciting experience. I was a participant in the filming of a
television series called Life After People,
airing on the History Channel. I was one
of two people featured that shared the history of Rhyolite and the structural
decay taking place in the buildings as time went on without human intervention
for repairs and maintenance. I’m usually
on the backside of a camera, sharing my experiences with the readers of my Ghost Town USA magazine column and this
website. It was truly a rewarding
experience to be on the “pointy end”
of the camera sharing my zeal for ghost towns with a television audience. Once I find out when the episode will air
I’ll share that here.
RHYOLITE YESTERDAY
Rhyolite exploded onto the scene in August 1904
when well-known
As the discovery camp, Bullfrog had the advantage,
and became the focus of the rush that ensued. Soon however, the nearby site of
Rhyolite, sprawled along a sloping alluvial plain between Bonanza and Ladd
mountains, attracted more boomers, and by the spring of 1905 the streets of
Rhyolite were lined with canvas-sided tents and wooden shanties, along with
1500 people.
Progress was rapid, and through 1906 tents and
shanties had been replaced by solid wood-frame structures and beautiful but
expensive cut rock and concrete buildings, some as tall as three stories. The
rhyolite and granite rock was cut, dressed and transported from local quarries.
In 1907 the town was at its zenith. Estimates of
population range from 3500 to 10,000 people, and most folks seem to think the
upper limit was in the 7-8000 range. No matter.
The booming city also claimed two railroads (the Las Vegas &
Tonopah, and the Tonopah & Tidewater), two daily newspapers, a magazine
(only one issue), two churches, auto stages, a stock exchange, doctors,
dentists, real estate offices, law offices, banks, eight grocery stores, 50
saloons, restaurants, 19 hotels and boarding houses, a flourishing red-light
district, opera house, a baseball team and a 14’ x 40’ public swimming
pool gave the community something few mining camps had. There were many other
businesses, all befitting a growing city.
(Time and additional research will probably modify some of those numbers.)
In 1906, the
As Rhyolite faded, people dispersed and the
remaining buildings were abandoned.
RHYOLITE TODAY
Over time, vandals and the weather have taken
their toll, and the gutted
structures began to crumble. Today the site is administered by the
Bureau of Land Management, and watched over by a citizen's group called
"The Friends of Rhyolite." They are raising money to stabilize the
buildings, and hopefully prevent further deterioration. Unfortunately for us as treasure hunters,
metal detecting and collecting of any artifacts inside the town limits is
prohibited. There are BLM caretakers on site, and they insist that visitors
remain outside the perimeter of the buildings.
Some are fenced others are not.
Please do abide by their wishes.
If you are in the area metal detecting at any other ghost towns, a trip
here is a must, just to see the place. It is passenger car accessible.
Some of the major buildings in town include:
The two-story
school had three classrooms on the lower level, and an auditorium and a
fourth classroom on the second. It was completed in December 1908, and built
for a total cost of $20,000. Bonds for the
building were issued, and in 1978 were finally paid off. Today the roofless and windowless walls
remain, and a concrete slab inside used to be claimed to help stabilize the
structure, but in reality was poured by a film company and has compromised the
structural stability of the school building.
The Overbury
Building was a three-story cut rock and concrete block building that
cost about $60,000, when it was built in 1906 by John T. Overbury. It housed a
bank and general offices and was completed in June 1907. On June 2, the 1st
National Bank of Rhyolite held their grand opening on the first floor.
Across
The picturesque, roofless John
S. Cook Bank building was one of four banks and the city's skyscraper
with a bank on the lower floor, and two floors of professional offices above.
Construction began in March 1907, and it was completed by the end of the year,
at a cost estimated to be between $60-90,000. The post office relocated into
the basement, and the doors were opened. They didn't remain open for long,
closing in the spring of 1910, forcing the post office to relocate. On December
31, 1910, the building's fixtures were sold at auction.
Adjoining the Cook building on the right was the
two-story
The Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad erected a
beautiful railroad
depot that is still standing. After the railroad pulled out it was used
as a restaurant and casino, and later as a residence. At the time of our visit
in December 1997 it was unoccupied, but was fenced off by the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) to prevent vandalism.
Other notable buildings in the town were the
four-celled concrete jail built in 1907, and the famous bottle
house. The later was built by resident Tom Kelly in 1906 with 20-30,000
beer,
whiskey and wine bottles and was lived in until 1989. It is the only
remaining one of three such structures. Like the railroad station, it has been
fenced off by BLM, and is eventually slated for restoration.
Standing on the crumbling sidewalk in front of the
John S. Cook Bank Building in the earmuff quiet of the cold, wet December fog,
it took very little imagination to hear the sounds of life passing by on the
streets of Rhyolite, Nevada's ghost city.
A visit to this former city is a fantastic trip into the past, but
remaining after dark becomes
ethereal. After the sun goes
down and the daytime tourists leave, the quiet
streets of Rhyolite truly echo with the quiet footsteps of its ghosts.
This was our GHOST TOWN OF THE MONTH for
November 1998,
and this article underwent a major modification in April 2009 to be re-featured as the Ghost Town of the Month for April 2009.
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POSTED: Dec 01,
1998
LAST
UPDATED: May 04, 2009
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