Nearby is the oddly fascinating (and free to visit) Goldwell Open Air Museum, which features interesting art sculptures, mainly installed as permanent installations. However, you can still see the remains of some of the larger buildings, like the Cook Bank, the schoolhouse, and the train station, which is intact. Today most of the buildings are gone, including the mercantile, which was struck by lightning in 2014 and burned to the ground. The town grew extremely quickly, with extensive infrastructure and amenities and an estimated peak population between 35 people in 1907-1908, and served miners from nearby camps with a bank, a hospital, an opera house, railroad service, and more. One of the many boom towns that sprang up in the area, Rhyolite was founded in 1905 and empty by 1916. Whether a day or night visit on a Death Valley road trip, exploring the decaying Rhyolite ghost town or the rather odd, permanent open-air sculptures at Goldwell will keep young and old entertained. What’s Nearby?: Keane Wonder Mill, Keane Wonder Mine, Keane Wonder Springs and Cyty’s Mill, Keane Canyon, Titus Canyon, Leadfield Ghost Town And of course, taking advantage of dark skies for star gazing in Rhyolite, Nevada is a given since Death Valley is a certified Dark Sky Park.
You can read more about the history of Rhyolite on wikipedia. Red Tape/Notes: Rhyolite is technically outside of Death Valley National Park, so it’s free to visit! The access road is clearly marked on highway 374, just west of Beatty, Nevada. Location: Beatty Junction area, Death Valley Take Highway 374 west from Beatty and turn right into the well. In 1880, Leavenworth Kansas had an estimated 150 saloons for 16,500 residents.Epic Travel → North America → The West Coast → Northern California → Death Valley → Rhyolite Ghost Town Rhyolite is located approximately four miles west of Beatty, Nevada, off of State Highway 374. The town, which at one time was the third largest town in Nevada, came into being. I was amused there were 50 saloons, though the number wasn’t unusually for the era. Rhyolite is supposed to be one of the best preserved ghost towns in Nevada.
Mona was amused there were 18 grocery stores (having grown up in a town that didn’t have even one). More than a mining encampment, Rhyolite was a thriving community with lodging houses, barbers, bakeries, and a school. There were three railroads serving the town. Famous for being the most photographed ghost town in the west, Rhyolite experienced a boom when gold ore was found there in the very early 1900s. The town had all the luxurious amenities of the era, including plumbing and electricity. Rhyolite Ghost Town If you have the time to devote to a ghost town day trip in Nevada, Rhyolite should be at the top of your list. A gold rush was on.īy 1908, Rhyolite’s estimated population was between 5,000 and 8,000 people. As word of the find spread, thousands of hopeful prospectors descended upon the hills ready to stake their claims and potential fortunes. In 1904, Shorty Harris and Ed Cross discovered gold in southeastern Nevada. Most of the buildings are just ruins but there's a few that are intact and one is the visitor's center and museum. There's not much remaining but it's enough to spark interest. In the 1930s, Revert Mercantile of Beatty acquired a Union Oil. Rhyolite is a ghost town that boomed during the Gold Rush in the early 20th century. Tourism flourished in and near Death Valley in the 1920s, and souvenir sellers set up tables in Rhyolite to sell rocks and bottles on weekends. It is not within the boundary of Death Valley National Park.
What fascinates me about Rhyolite is the incredible growth and rapid decline that occurred within only a couple of decades. The ghost town of Rhyolite is on a mixture of federal and private land. The ruins remain for tourists to explore. Rhyolite, named for the indigenous volcanic rock, was a settlement that boomed followed the discovery of nearby gold deposits only to be abandoned as soon as those deposits were exhausted and mines went bust. Rhyolite is a ghost town in Nye County, Nevada, located in the Bullfrog Hills, about 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas, near the eastern edge of Death Valley. Mona and I decided to add a little extra time on the road to follow the ghost town route.Ībout six miles outside of Beatty is the ghost town in Rhyolite, Nevada. The Rhyolite is not in California but it’s a good tip for those driving from CA to Vegas. We could travel quickly and easily or we could take a more scenic route to explore the desert. When planning our route from Las Vegas to Death Valley, I was excited to find the National Park Service provides a map with several routes online.