U.S. Highway 50 putters along in Colorado, merges with Interstate 70 at Grand Junction, resurfaces in western Utah and then something happens west of Hinckley, Utah.
As you stretch out across the Sevier Desert headed west across the Great Basin, everything disappears. Everything human-made that is. The landscape dominates. I swear I’ve seen ravens trying to hitchhike.
Unprepared drivers check their gas gauges, wonder if they have enough beer, pretzels and Cheese Nips. Instead, they should check their tires. It is miles and miles between air compressors. Oh, there’s plenty of air all right and blowing dust, dirt and other elements. Having driven Highway 50 recently, I truly experienced the Great Basin. It was 97 degrees outside, blowing dust had reduced visibility to about 15 feet, and the road had gone missing.
I was driving through the Confusion Range of mountains with 9,725 foot Notch Peak to the north and the Wah Wah Mountains to the south, but I couldn’t see anything. Suddenly, the dirt cleared. Neon signs blinked at me out of the dusky twilight proclaiming The Border Inn.
I’d made it to Nevada. I was now officially on The Loneliest Road in America complete with slot machines, well-used modular trailer units as a makeshift motel and a breakfast promise of toast, hash browns, and ham and eggs.
That great American traveler of the 19th century, Mark Twain, who had taken a similar stagecoach route west across Nevada to visit his brother in Carson City, wrote in “Roughing It” that, “All scenery looks better with ham and eggs.” He was right. Since Twain’s time, the scenery hasn’t changed much out there. The hardscrabble mining and ranching towns along Highway 50 saw their best years well over a century ago in the 1860s, which is why the highway stays lonely deep in the heart of basin and range territory where sagebrush reigns supreme.
What matters is the trip, not the destination. I passed Bean Flat and roads identifying nearby ranches, which could be seen as blushes of green, irrigated hay fields up against dry desert mountains. Occasionally, I was in awe at brave cyclists especially when the wind came up forcing me to cling tighter to the steering wheel.
The state of Nevada tourism office now offers “The Official NV HWY 50 Survival Guide,” which is leather embossed and looks like a formal U.S. passport. Start with the “Survival Guide to The Loneliest Road in America.” Get five stamps in it from businesses and museums among the eight towns along the route, mail it back to the Nevada Division of Tourism, and voilà! They’ll send you an official Highway 50 survivor souvenir and certificate (suitable for framing).
As for me, I just wanted to fill my tank. You can get your kicks on Route 66, but on Highway 50 always drive on the top half of empty. I was headed westbound and I made it to Eureka early on a Sunday morning.
Settled in 1864, Eureka boasts an opera house that has been restored along with the county courthouse. They are magnificent brick buildings, but what appealed to me most was the wooden Bartine Outhouse, the only five-hole outhouse in Nevada. Carpenters built it for businessman and mining entrepreneur Frederic Bartine (1888-1964).
An interpretive sign explains: “The outhouse itself has had a troubled past. It has been moved numerous times and has been the center of a legal dispute. It has now found a home on the site of the old Eureka barbershop and is being restored and maintained through private donations.” However the legal dispute ended, the outhouse, painted red and white with Greek Revival accents, now squats safely behind a chain-link fence and requires a new roof. Exactly why Mr. Bartine felt that five of his business associates might need to use the facilities simultaneously remains a mystery.
My wife, Stephanie Moran, has also driven Highway 50 solo. She recalled, not fondly, that it is “one damn basin and range after another,” especially during a three-day snowstorm. Before the era of credit card gas pumps, I drove the route once in a 1968 Volkswagen bus and wisely decided to spend the night in one of the mining towns waiting for a gas station to open in the morning.
My brother drove Highway 50 east bound from San Francisco on a motorcycle headed to see me in Colorado. After a long, bleary day with bugs in his hair and mustache, he finally found a motel, which included a café and bar. Dusty, disheveled, with his cycle helmet under his arm, he came into the saloon, stood before the bartender and croaked, “Scotch.” First the bartender reached for a glass, then he turned and gave him a bottle. My brother said the thick steak he had that night was the best road food he’d ever eaten.
As I drove The Loneliest Road, I noted the lack of yellow lines on the pavement, the distant clouds and the virga, or tendrils, of rain that never touched the ground. There are 30 mph curves and plenty of abandoned motels, cars and trucks, but now for a younger crowd, there’s a new world of mountain bike trails.
“Owning a business in Austin, Nevada, is long and hard,” one café owner told me.
I passed retaining walls artfully built of stone, but no structures. I found wooden stairs without steps, original wrought iron fence railings and simple miners’ cottages.
“We get a lot of Highway 50 traffic in the summer, but winter is completely dead,” said Carolyn Maestretti, an Episcopal priest at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Austin, which has held a service on Sunday continuously since 1878. I marveled at the elegantly shaped arched wooden beams of the church with its distinctive scissor trusses, scallop tracery and carved finials.
On a whim, she let me pull the rope on the 900-pound church bell that came from New York City. According to church legend, miners, not exactly the most devoted to Sunday services, donated a bar of silver from Austin’s mines for the bell’s casting to give it a better tone. I rang it twice. I felt vibrations from the ceiling down to the church’s oak floor.
On my way out of town, I stopped to see the stone edifice of Stoke’s Castle built in 1897 by Anson Phelps Stoke. The tower was designed to replicate a Medieval tower he had seen near Rome. Mining and railroad magnate Stoke had the tower built by hand-winching heavy stones three stories high. Each floor had fireplaces, plate-glass windows, plumbing and exterior balconies on the second and third floors.
Built as a summer home, the structure sits on a mountain rim and looks out across miles of the Great Basin. It had been abandoned like so many other buildings along the highway, and like the dreams of cowboys and miners who failed to scratch a living out of the silver sage.
On a stock tank without a cow in sight, I saw the hand painted sign “Nowhere, NV!” I thought that was a harsh judgment, but I checked my gas gauge just to be safe. There are great road trips in the United States and Highway 50 in Nevada is one of them. The Urban Cowboy Bar & Grill in Eureka is hiring, but Louie’s Lounge with the outdoor sign that says “Dancing! Fun!” has been closed for quite a while. Across the street is a vintage gray 1940s Studebaker Skyway Commander coupe. There’s a “For Sale” sign but no price. On The Loneliest Road in America, make an offer.
Andrew Gulliford, an award-winning author and editor, is professor of history at Fort Lewis College. Reach him at andy@agulliford.com.
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