Nevada Ghost Towns. Where, when, and how to discover the best photography in America. Updated - April Published since 1989

Transcription

1 Updated - April Where, when, and how to discover the best photography in America Published since 1989 Nevada Ghost Towns In addition to nature, landscape, and wildlife photography, I enjoy exploring and photographing ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings and old ghost towns. In past newsletters, I ve written about Bodie, Bannack, Tuscarora, and other western ghost towns. For this newsletter, I recently returned to Nevada to explore and photograph ghost towns in the mountains of central Nevada and the deserts of southern Nevada. There are more than seventeen-hundred documented sites where mining activities took place in Nevada, starting back in the 1800s. These communities would spring up, seemingly overnight, around the latest gold or silver strike. Entire towns consisted of stores, saloons, and assay offices housed in canvas tents with false fronts of wood. If the strike panned out, a railroad line might be constructed. As more ore was dug from the earth, buildings of rock and stone were constructed. People believed that the ore-rich veins would last forever. As veins of silver and gold grew poorer and poorer, miners would slowly leave. As communities emptied, canvas tents and wooden buildings were taken by their owners to more promising strikes, leaving the permanent stone buildings to be reclaimed by time and weather. Many ghost towns never progressed to the railroad or stone-and-concrete building stage. As a result, many locations are marked only by scattered foundations or a few rusting tin cans. These communities, now mostly abandoned, are scattered across the state of Nevada. I chose the twelve locations included in this newsletter because each has unique photographic possibilities.

2 issue 83 - page 2 As soon as heavy winter snows covering the deserts of Nevada started to melt, I was packed and ready to travel. In the middle of March, I drove over the Sierra Nevada Range, crossed the Donner Summit, and headed through Reno. Sixty miles east of Reno is the community of Fallon, Nevada, where I spent several nights in a budget motel. All the major motel chains are located in Fallon. There are three RV parks and campgrounds in Fallon. For a week-long exploration of ghost towns in the mountains of central Nevada, I chose Fallon as conveniently-located headquarters. I was able to find a good selection of lodgings, plenty of restaurants, and all the supplies I needed. maps and supplies I needed some good maps for my explorations. The problem with DeLorme s Nevada Atlas is that you can t always tell the paved Look at any topo map of Nevada, and you ll see that there are dozens of mountain ranges running from north to south with long, narrow valleys between each range. Most roads run up and down the valleys and not over the mountains. You can spend a whole day traveling between Ione and Ophir Canyon. There are only three highways crossing Nevada from east to west: Interstate 80, Interstate 15, and US Highway 50, called The Loneliest Road in America. roads from the unpaved roads. Some of the red lines are paved roads and some are unpaved. Auto club maps and the free maps available at visitor information offices in Nevada do a better job of delineating which roads are paved and which are unpaved. These maps usually have less detail than a Delorme Atlas. Some of the visitor centers in Nevada s towns sell highly-detailed maps and guide books describing nearby mines and ghost towns. The Churchill County Museum, at the south end of Maine Street in Fallon, sells travel guides and books on the relatively short history of the Territory and the State of Nevada. Their large collection is definitely worth a visit. They sell several guide books detailing Nevada s ghost town locations. Next, I made a quick stop at a grocery store for survival rations including turkey jerky, trail mix, and a bag of apples. I filled my ice chest with bottled water and topped it up with ice. I replaced the batteries in my GPS unit and recharged my camera and laptop batteries. I had the 4Runner s oil changed and topped up all the fluid levels then checked the tire pressures. I was ready for some off-road travel. Many of the unpaved roads crossing Nevada s vast expanses are unmarked at junctions where several roads cross and fork, heading off to the horizon with no clue as to which route goes to the place you re going. A compass helps. Following the most heavily-traveled route didn t always work when I was searching for a remote ghost town in the mountains and the only tire tracks to follow were three feet apart. I soon learned that I was following hunters on all-terrain vehicles. It s nice to have a few extra gallons of gas for those extra-long drives into the wilderness. I carry a five-gallon, red plastic gas can in the back of my Toyota 4Runner when I m exploring Nevada s remote back country. Several times I ve been turned around by mud that s too deep to navigate after driving fifty miles down an unmarked, unpaved road in Nevada. Few small towns along the two-lane routes crossing Nevada have gas available and the pumps may not be open when you arrive.

3 issue 83 - page 3 The discovery of tungsten in 1926 built the town of Gabbs. The discovery of magnesium during World War II created a huge boom. Gold is being mined now just outside the town. It has never been a ghost town. The unpaved roads were dry, but patches of snow still covered the northern slopes of most of central Nevada s mountains when I returned in mid-march this year. Tire chains were still advised for the higher mountain passes. The all-terrain tires on my Toyota 4Runner were adequate for negotiating the few miles of deep snow I encountered. After my first night in Fallon, I packed up early the next morning and headed east on Highway 50, called the Loneliest Road in America. I was heading for the ghost town called Berlin. Twenty miles east of Fallon, Sand Mountain rises hundreds of feet above the Salt Wells Basin, at the southern edge of the Stillwater Range. From a distance, at the edge of Highway 50, I saw the undulating patterns of ridges formed by strong winds blowing off the Sierra Nevada Range. I turned left, onto the side road that leads to the base of Sand Mountain, and saw motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, and dune buggies climbing the dunes. The steep slopes were covered with tire tracks. I backed off to photograph Sand Mountain from a distance. Six miles east of Sand Mountain, I stopped along Highway 50 to photograph the expansive dry lake bed (above) that is part of the U.S. Naval Air Station at Fallon. I lowered my tripod and shot under the barbed wire fence with a 15mm lens. Fifty miles east of Fallon, at a spot called Middlegate, I headed south at the marked right turn onto Nevada State Route 361. I drove thirty miles south on this fast, straight, two-lane paved highway until I spotted the marked left turn onto State Route 844. From this junction, a paved road climbs over the Paradise Mountain Range and drops into the wide and flat Ione Valley. From the summit of the Brunton Pass, I saw the remains of a mining town about ten miles in the distance. At a junction in the middle of the valley, I continued driving east to Berlin. Berlin N W It s actually called the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. A large sign near the entrance to this Historic District points out that the ghost town, and the nearby site where many large fossils were recently discovered, are both under the same state jurisdiction. There is a small museum near the entrance where you pay the entry fee. Drive up the hill to a small parking area in front of the old assay office. From here you can walk the trail around the historic mining town. The elevation here is about 7,000 feet. The mine s old machine shop has no doors and is open to the public. There s an old Dodge truck parked in front of the machine shop. The large mill s interior is off-limits to the public, but it has large, open windows and the machinery inside is fascinating. Afternoon light streams through the mill s open windows and creates contrast problems. I shot a bracketed series of exposures inside the machine shop and through the windows of the mill to assemble an HDR image, combining over-exposed images with under-exposed images to create a photograph of the scene with the full range of light I actually saw. I then moved outside and photographed the old truck and the exterior of the machine shop. You can see the result on the cover of this newsletter. At sunrise, the town of Berlin sits in the shadows near the base of the western slopes of the Shoshone Mountains. By mid-morning, the sun rises high enough to strike the back of most of the buildings except for a couple of miners cabins. The first assay report on the gold in Berlin Canyon was made in The Berlin Mine was established in The nearby camps of Grantsville, Union, and Ione, had been booming since 1863 but when the Berlin Mines were in full production, nearly a million dollars worth of gold was processed by the thirty-stamp mill. The population of Berlin grew to almost 250 miners, shopkeepers, cooks, bartenders, and doctors.

4 issue 83 - page 4 Afternoon at the Berlin Mill Cabins below the Berlin Mill Morning is the best time to photograph the interior of the mill. Over a three-day period, I made several trips to Berlin, watching for the best light. Late in the afternoon, when the sun is setting over the Paradise Range in the west, is the best time to be in Berlin with a camera. Thirteen buildings still stand, in various states of repair. Several large air compressors and other rusting bits and pieces of mining equipment are scattered across the hillside below the mill. Signs mark the sites of buildings long gone. Some have collapsed beneath winter snows and some have burned to the ground. A few cabins have been restored for use as rangers quarters and others look like they probably did a hundred years ago. Billy Bell s Saloon was just a couple of tents covering a wooden plank floor. It s gone now, but the outhouse behind the Armstrong home is still standing. It s on the far western side of the remaining buildings, standing out on the edge of the remote Ione Valley. Down the hill below Berlin, a half-mile beyond the site of Billy Bell s Saloon, is a small and lonely cemetery. The road to the Ichthyasaur Fossil site passes through the Historic District of Berlin and continues east for two miles, through the campground and up the hill to the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park Visitor Center. Fossils of fifty-foot-long marine reptiles were discovered on this hillside in About forty of these fossils have since been found in the area. Living about the same time as the dinosaurs, these air-breathing, carnivorous reptiles bore their young alive and had huge eyes in relation to the size of their bodies. They fed on mollusks and fish. Tours of the ichthyosaur fossil house and excavation sites are offered from March through November. The gate was locked. I hiked up the hill to the fossil house which was also closed and locked. I walked back to my car and drove down the hill to photograph the only remaining building still standing in the mining camp once called Union. The Union adobe is near the entrance to the campground. Grantsville Grantsville, another ghost town I wanted to explore, is about four miles southeast of Berlin. There are a few miners cabins built of stone or adobe that are still standing. The old mill makes the most interesting composition at sunset. All the roads in this area are unpaved, but graded and easy to follow. The Grantsville Mill at sunset Quartz Mountain The remains of the old mine at Quartz Mountain is located east of State Route 361. A sign along the highway points out the left turn to Broken Hills Mine, two miles east, and Quartz Mountain Mine, five miles east of the pavement. The graded dirt road twists and turns down dry washes and over low hills past the Broken Hills Mine. Some corrugated metal buildings stand near open mine shafts. Three miles farther east, the tall shaft headframe still stands above the Quartz Mountain Mine. Open mine shafts are fenced off to prevent accidents.

5 issue 83 - page 5 The collapsed remains of about ten old wooden miner s homes are scattered around the area. Back in the 1920s, about five-hundred people lived here. By 1930, the ore had run out and the town was abandoned. Cow skulls decorate some buildings in Ione. I saw lots of photographic possibilities in Ione. Standing in front of the welcome sign, I looked back over my left shoulder, and saw one of the numerous stone cabins remaining. Some scattered mobile homes dot the hillsides above the road and many more interesting dwellings can be found as well. Some are two-story brick homes and others are dug into hillsides with awnings over front doors made of old truck hoods. By camping in the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, a photographer could be up and out on location at the best sites in the area for sunrise and sunset with a minimum of driving. The Quartz Mountain Mine As I walked around the mine shaft headframe, the ground sparkled with tiny bits of gold-colored quartz. This is where all the ore was hauled from the depths of the mine to the surface and dumped into trucks. Some of their gold appears to be still lying around. My map shows that an unpaved road continues eastward from the Quartz Mountain Mine toward the town of Ione. There are lots of unmarked junctions along this route. With some careful map reading, I reached the southern end of the town of Ione in about forty-five minutes. Ione N W A large sign on the south end of town calls Ione, The town that refused to die, and claims a population of 41. There are several old false-front stores and one operating business selling spirits, vittles, and gas. An old store in Ione An old stone building in Candelaria After shooting ghost towns in the mountains, I headed south to photograph some desert ghost towns. I chose the town of Tonopah, Nevada, as a place to stay. Tonopah is located about halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, on Highway 95, out on the edge of Nellis Air Force Base and not far from the Yucca Flats Nuclear Test Site. It s about as remote as you ll get in Nevada and a good base for explorations of a dozen nearby ghost towns. Candelaria N W This desert ghost town, named for its location in the Candelaria Hills west of Tonopah, has been the center of a silver mining industry dating back to 1863 when Spanish prospectors made a silver strike in the early territorial days of Nevada. All that remains now is a large cemetery, the ruins of several wooden shacks, a few crude shelters that were dug into the hillsides with both wooden and stone fronts, and the shells of two impressive commercial buildings, which were probably a bank and a mercantile store (above). The two stone structures on each side of the road through town are definitely worth a stop. Their roofs and parts of the rear walls have collapsed.

6 issue 83 - page 6 These buildings were part of a two-blocklong business district supported by a population of two-thousand people. The railroad arrived in 1882 and the place boomed. A municipal water system was installed as well as twenty-seven saloons. By the early 1890s, problems at the mines started a long decline which caused the death of Candelaria in The place was abandoned until 1979, when mining resumed using modern mining techniques. A large open pit mine has recently been worked for silver ore on the mountainside above the town site. By hiking up the hill on the south side of the road, I found a few stone foundations and crumbling remains of several walls. Some new-looking No Trespassing signs kept me from hiking farther from the road. The marked side road to Candelaria is seven miles south of Tonopah Junction. The sixmile road to the remains of Candelaria is paved all the way from Highway 95 up to the mine. It s an open, desolate landscape. There s not a lot to photograph, but it s an easy drive to this ghost town. If you continue driving west through Candelaria, the pavement ends but the road continues climbing over the White Mountains to Bishop, California, an adventure I saved for another day. The Nye County Courthouse in Belmont Belmont N W Silver discoveries in the hills on the western edge of the Monitor Valley made a few early prospectors very rich. The mines are located at about 7,600 feet in the Toquima Range. A city grew around the mines. Belmont, Nevada, forty-five miles north of Tonopah, became the largest city in southern Nevada and was the county seat of Nye County in 1867, attracting a population of almost two-thousand people before the mines shut down in the late 1880s. In 1905, the county seat was moved to Tonopah. The old Nye County Court House still stands on a knoll beyond a grove of large cottonwoods (lower left). It s in remarkably good condition, except for a large hole blown out of the back wall of the jail in the rear. I made two trips out to Belmont to photograph this impressive building in the best light. The court house faces east and is best photographed in the morning. An old store front on the main street in Belmont The rest of the town is a mixture of new dwellings and many ruins remaining from the 1800s. There is a block-long row of businesses on both sides of the main street. Only two still have standing facades (above). The others have standing stone walls interspersed with more recently-built cottages. An old fire engine, some farm equipment, and rusty mining machinery has been parked along the main street. When the town of Belmont died in the late 1800s, the church was moved to the nearby town of Manhattan. Recently, the residents of Belmont wanted it returned. The people of Manhattan refused to return it so Belmont residents built a duplicate, which they improved with an organ, a piano, and carpets. At the top of the main street is a large, restored building now called the Belmont Monitor Inn and Steakhouse. It s now a bed and breakfast establishment. The building originally housed the Combination Silver Mining Company offices. Next door is a saloon with a old buggy parked out in front.

7 issue 83 - page 7 Although the saloon was closed for business, the owner invited me in to photograph the interior. It has been restored to original condition, and is a picture-perfect old west saloon. I made several bracketed series of exposures to combine later in an attempt to compress the extreme lighting range between the dark shadows below the bar and the sunlight streaming in the windows and reflecting in the large mirror behind the antique cash register. Down the main street, in the other direction, is another reconstructed beer parlor called Dirty Dick s 1867 Belmont Saloon. Standing next to it is an old gas pump with a calibrated glass cylinder on top. Gas was pumped into the container to measure it and then was fed by gravity into your Model T. It probably isn t working, but it is secured with a chain and packlock. Another highly visible landmark in the middle of Belmont is the old mill s tall red brick chimney, a few hundred yards off the road. To reach the site of the old mill, turn onto the marked Mill Pond Road and follow it as it winds around behind the chimney and ends at the base of the chimney (right). Nearby, a sign marks the road to a large cemetery south of town. There are some beautifully-ornate wrought iron filigree work on some of the fences around a few family plots. There s a lot of history in Belmont. Eight miles south of Belmont a seventeen-mile dirt road climbs toward the west over the southern end of the Toquima Mountains and connects Belmont and Manhattan. You might want to shoot Belmont in the morning and then drive over the mountain to photograph the remains of Manhattan in the afternoon. A side street in Belmont

8 issue 83 - page 8 Like everywhere I visited in Nevada, people in the town of Manhattan who spotted me photographing their homes, opened their doors, waved, and smiled. Manhattan N W Even if you squint your eyes, this town doesn t resemble its namesake. The church on the hill above Manhattan, Nevada, (below) is the most striking image to be found here. This church was moved from the town of Berlin. Silver was discovered in The real boom times arrived in 1905 when a cowboy staked a gold claim. The population climbed to 4,000 when telephone service and electricity was installed by The huge openpit mine on the west end of town produced over $10,000,000 worth of silver, gold, and copper before it was finally closed in Even Howard Hughes once owned and operated a mine in Manhattan. Main Street has its share of photogenic old buildings as well as new double-wide mobile homes and badly remodeled hundred-year-old pioneer homes. There were two saloons open when I drove through town. I drove all the back streets climbing into the hills above the town and found more miners shacks. Ophir Canyon N W ,530 Twenty-five miles north of Manhattan, on State Route 376, there is a sign marking the turn onto the dirt road leading into Ophir Canyon. The junction is about ten miles north of the very small town of Carvers, Nevada, which is located almost a hundred miles north of Tonopah. By staying a whole week in Tonopah, I was able to explore Nevada s more southernly ghost towns. Ophir Canyon is very close to the center of the state. The mining town in Ophir Canyon, dating from 1863, is sixteen miles east of Ione, Nevada. It s a long drive, over ninety miles, between the two towns around the southern end of the Shoshone and Toiyabe Mountain Ranges. It s five-miles from the pavement of Route 367 to the dramatic stone ruins high in Ophir Canyon. A graded dirt road makes a long, gentle climb from the center of the Smoky Valley to the base of the Toyabe Mountains. When I passed the Ophir Cemetary (below) sitting high on a knoll, the road began to climb up the canyon. From a distance, it looks like the road into the mountains climbs steeply, up a series of switchbacks. The road to the ruins, hidden in the trees, actually climbs the bottom of the narrow canyon, following Ophir Creek. I crossed the narrow stream seven times before reaching my destination. It s a two-anda-half-mile, four-wheel-drive climb in low range with an elevation gain of two-thousand feet to reach the first good location for photography. Patches of snow in the shadows of the canyon walls still covered some sections of the road in March.

9 issue 83 - page 9 Willows and small groves of aspen line the creek higher in the canyon a good place to be for fall color in late September. In some places, the canyon walls are composed of vertical layers of stone looking like black slate. In other places, the walls are strangely twisted into circular forms resembling light gray bubbles. The road follows the easiest route along the creek. No excavations were made to build the road. It was built in the mid-1860s when a population of four-hundred miners lived here. Unlike many of Nevada s other mines, Ophir Canyon is a beautiful spot, especially in winter when the upper slopes are covered with snow. Several hundred yards farther up the canyon stands the impressive stone ruins of the Ophir Mill. I moved around and found several good locations for my tripod. In afternoon light, the view through the open windows reveals the distant Smoky Valley framed in the V-notch of the canyon. Across the road and up the hill, a small, square building still stands. I climbed up there to find the opening of a fireplace. Broken red bricks are scattered all around this base of an old chimney. Watch where you walk and don t even get close to the open mine shafts. The soft dirt walls can collapse beneath you. Every ghost town and old mine I ve explored in Nevada has been different. Ophir Canyon ruins are hidden away in a very remote canyon that is worth the effort to visit. Make sure that your 4x4 has low range gearing and at least ten inches of ground clearance. Tybo N W High in the Hot Springs Mountains, sixty-five miles north of Tonopah, the mining community of Tybo was established in Near a spot named Blue Jay on my map, I stopped to photograph a large herd of wild horses in the distance below Rawhide Mountain. To cut through the haze across Big Salt Spring Valley, I added a polarizing filter and set the tone comp. in the shooting menu to more contrast. I then made three bracketed exposures to merge later. The remains of the business district in Ophir Canyon I passed several low, stone cabins, still in good repair, before reaching two large stone store buildings. The fronts are still in fairly good condition, with several willows growing through the openings (above). The side walls and back walls are crumbling away. The facades face the southwest and the afternoon light was perfect as I photographed these ruins. The charcoal kilns above Tybo The remains of the mill in Ophir Canyon The most interesting things to photograph in Tybo are the two large stone charcoal kilns hidden away in a canyon two miles west of the town at an elevation of seven thousand feet. Fifteen brick charcoal kilns were built here in Three more sets of these brick kilns are still standing five miles west of Tybo, in a remote location along the old stage route to Belmont. Pinon pine, cut and hauled out of the mountains was burned to make the charcoal fuel for the smelters at Tybo.

10 issue 83 - page 10 The population of Tybo reached 1,000 in The mines closed for a while in Major investments in larger mills kept Tybo in business until Almost $10,000,000 in silver and lead was taken from these mountains. There s a small mining operation going on there today. The old four-story Goldfield Hotel stands out from a great distance as you approach the town. There are several operating saloons and a couple of places where you can buy a sandwich, but not much else. Hundreds of dwellings, ranging from hundred-year-old shacks, to rusting trailers, to a few modern homes, surround the business district. It s a dusty, hilly landscape that s dotted with joshua trees reminding visitors that this town is really part of the desert. There are no lodgings available in Goldfield and I didn t see any restaurants. There is one gas station in the middle of Goldfield. A large fire in 1994 destroyed more than thirty buildings. The well-preserved remains of the Trowbridge General Store still has most of the original glass windows. You can see that the interior is being restored. Several other stone structures in Tybo are now being preserved. To reach Tybo, drive north from Tonopah on Highway 6 toward Ely, Nevada. About 10 miles north of the junction of Highway 375 at Warm Springs, watch for a sign along Highway 6 pointing west to Tybo. About four miles from the pavement of Highway 6, on a graded dirt road, is another junction. Bear left at the sign pointing out that Tybo is fifteen miles farther west. I reset my trip odometer and found that the distance to Tybo is actually only four miles and not fifteen. From the center of the old Tybo business district, the two stone kilns are two miles farther west. Bear left at the next unmarked fork. Goldfield N W Twenty-seven miles south of Tonopah, Highway 95, on its way to Las Vegas, runs right through the center of the town of Goldfield. There are plenty of relics of past glories to be found here. Almost every street in town had a few spots where I set up my tripod. The archway (above) of the old athletic club still stands on a side street, called Main Street, about a block from the highway. The west side of the stone arch is most ornate and frames the Ish-Curtis Building (1907), one block to the east. This view is best in afternoon light, like the front of the Goldfield Hotel. Many of the biggest and most impressive structures face the west and the setting sun. The old school house, now undergoing renovation, faces the east. Goldfield is only twenty minutes south of Tonopah via Highway 95 and is easy to reach for an early morning photo session.

11 issue 83 - page 11 There are many small details like signs in windows and close-ups of a restored antique fire engine. The information office on the main street was closed, so I gathered information from signs and plaques on many of the buildings. I learned that Goldfield was Nevada s greatest gold mining camp. Its production exceeded all other mines in Nevada until modern mining methods were introduced in Gold Point Gold Point, founded in 1861, was originally named Lime Point for the nearby lime deposits, which was changed to Silverhorn when silver was discovered and then was renamed Gold Point when Gold was discovered in The population climbed to over a thousand in 1906, at the peak of the boom years. This bleak community now has a population of 27, as is claimed by the hand-lettered sign at the edge of town. There are over forty wooden buildings of the original two-hundred-twenty-five, remaining in Gold Point and most look so weather-beaten and worn out that they must have been out here in the desert sun for well over a hundred years. There are quite a few false-front stores (below), saloons, and other businesses still standing, although they are scattered about in different locations around the town. Some face east and some face west making this both a sunrise and sunset location. The largest part of Gold Point covers an area about a half-mile square. Other buildings, including the remains of several mills, some mineshaft headframes, and old abandoned miner s cabins are scattered for a mile in every direction. The town is also dotted with joshua trees, a nice touch for this desert landscape (below). Gold Point has many more remaining buildings than most of the ghost towns I ve visited. Most are basic, wooden shacks and weathered wooden store buildings. The nearby town of Goldfield was a much richer mining town and still has some impressive architecture. I found the photographic possibilities greater in Gold Point, so I spent more time exploring the area. I drove the dirt roads into the hills beyond the town and found more abandoned miners shacks. To reach Gold Point, drive west on paved State Route 266 leaving Highway 95 at Lida Junction about fifteen miles south of Goldfield. About seven miles west, bear left on paved State Route 774 and drive seven more miles into Gold Point. After leaving Gold Point, I continued driving south on Highway 95, the road between Reno and Las Vegas. When I reached the town of Beattie, Nevada, the eastern gateway to Death Valley National Park. Beattie is twenty-five miles east of Death Valley and only four miles east of Rhyolite, a popular and well-visited Nevada ghost town.

12 Rhyolite The piles of tailings on both sides of the road into Rhyolite have grown into huge mountains since my last visit to the area in There must still be lots of gold in these mountains. The bottle house is still there and is open to the public when the gate is open. A chain link fence circles it. The shell of the old two-story school building still stands as well as the three-story Cook Bank (above), the facade of the Porter Brother s general store, the ornate train depot, and the jail. A few miners homes are still standing as well as bits and pieces of stone foundations. A gold strike in August of 1904 began the growth of Rhyolite. By 1910, the population grew to 8,000 people. At its peak, Rhyolite had an opera house, three train lines, three newspapers, a symphony, baseball teams, tennis courts, swimming pools, three hospitals, nineteen hotels, eighteen grocery stores, and fifty-three saloons. Visitors are free to explore buildings not surrounded by chain link fences like the train station is. A few of the more interesting old shacks are now residences and off-limits to the curious. There s still plenty to photograph in Rhyolite, and it s a quick and easy side trip for visitors to Death Valley. Leaving Rhyolite, I headed west, crossing the California Border for a sunset photo session in Death Valley. Have a great trip and send me a postcard!! My life-long career in photography began at San Jose State University in After college, I enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, serving as a photographer and darkroom technician. In Germany, my skills and experience with equipment and lab work were developed and polished. I took the opportunity to photograph the beauty of nature in the Black Forest. Returning to California in 1965, I produced industrial and military training films for Raytheon Electronics and began showing my color nature prints. From 1969 through 1981, my photography was exhibited and sold in West Coast galleries. During the early 1980 s, I taught color darkroom workshops, then expanded to include field trips. Former customers, who had purchased my framed photographs, wanted to learn photography. My Pacific Image Photography Workshops offered adventures to the Pacific Coast, the Southwest deserts, national parks, Hawaii, New England, Canada, England, and the South Pacific. The workshops evolved into writing and sharing my adventures with others. Photograph America Newsletter provides information on where, when, and how to discover the best nature photography in North America. Photograph America Newsletter is published quarterly (four issues/year) by Robert Hitchman assisted by technical associate/wife, Katherine Post Office Box 86, Novato, CA All contents of this newsletter copyright Robert Hitchman Please don t make copies for your friends. This is a violation of Federal copyright laws. This newsletter survives on subscriptions.