I awoke early in Hawthorne, got a decent breakfast at Mr. Beane’s coffee shop, and got back on the road. A short distance from Hawthorne US 95 takes a jog eastward, but otherwise today’s ride was looking a lot like yesterday’s.
Then suddenly I found myself passing through another (nearly dead) town. Luning (pop: 87) was established in 1884 as a railroad town, with a trackside facility for loading magnesium ore onto freight cars. The once-active facility has long since shut down, but the main structures still stand, and I suspect the ghosts of long-since-passed stevedores still walk their creaky floors on moonlit nights.
One wonders why 87 people still remain in this ghost town. From what I saw, the housing stock isn’t especially covetable.
Some time after leaving Luning I came to a similar town. Like Luning, Mina (pop: 150) was founded as a railroad town over a century ago. As with so many Nevada towns, Mina owed its existence to mining operations. But the mines eventually played out, the residents began to move away, and the trains stopped coming through town.
You’ve really got to wonder why anyone stays in this godforsaken place, with no working infrastructure to speak of, no job opportunities, and, to my eye at least, no pleasant surroundings. On top of all that, the nearest town with a gas pump and a mini mart is well over an hour away.
As far as I can tell, Mina is only known for two things. First, it used to have a restaurant named The Desert Lobster that was definitely unique. Owner Bob Eddy bought an old, damaged yacht he’d found in Texas and had it shipped to Mina, and this served as the front of his restaurant. But here was the genius of Bob’s plan: He would raise lobsters in greenhouses out in the desert, fed with water from a nearby spring. Sadly, wildlife officials eventually put an end to the lobster farm, and as of a few years ago the restaurant closed.
The other thing Mina is known for is its role in shaping America’s death penalty. In 1921 a Chinese immigrant by the name of Gee Jon was convicted of killing a laundry proprietor in Mina. He was sentenced to death, and was the first person to be executed by lethal gas. You can read the whole sordid tale here.
As I drove away from Mina I began to notice an intense point of light ahead of me on the left. For many miles the light kept getting brighter and closer. Finally I stopped at a rest stop near the light’s source and I learned that the light was coming from the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. The project is essentially a huge array of mirrors sitting in the desert that concentrates sunlight at one point, creating enough heat to superheat liquid salt that is then used to produce steam and turn generators. (Think of it as frying an ant with a magnifying glass, on steroids.) Only about 6 years old, the plant has been beset with technical troubles and lawsuits. It was eventually shut down, but it appears to have been restarted by the time I drove by.
About an hour and half later I came upon the (relative) metropolis of Tonopah (pop: 2,500). Once the place that Wyatt Earp called home, Tonopah started out as a mining town around the turn of the 20th century. Like all the other mining towns it declined in the mid-century, but its location about halfway between Reno and Las Vegas seems to have helped it to survive as a convenient stopover location for those traveling between the two cities.
I stopped for lunch at the Tonopah Brewing Company, whose motto is “blood, sweat & beers” (seriously). I ordered their Double IPA, but managed to knock it over it before I’d had more than a sip. (The waitress was not happy with my clumsiness.) So I really can’t say much about the beer. But I can say that Tonopah Brewing Company is the absolute best brew pub in Tonopah. Of course, it’s also the absolute worst brew pub in Tonopah…because it’s the only brew pub in Tonopah. Perhaps because it’s the only game in town, the place seems to cater to every conceivable taste. The music is an unlikely combination of death metal, country&western, 1970s pop, and the Beastie Boys. And the television is tuned to a Spanish-language station.
They do have their own small-batch brewing setup, and they have their own smoker for in-house barbecue preparation. I had a decent pulled pork sandwich.
Thus fortified with smoked, cooked, dead animals and a sleeve soaked with beer, I got back on the familiar Route 95 and soon encountered what is surely the scariest part of this trip: Tonopah’s Clown Motel.
The hotel was originally opened in 1985, and it seems that the intent was innocent enough. The original owners, Leroy and Leona David, say they wanted to honor their late father who’d amassed a collection of about 150 clown figures (as one frequently does). The clown figures were used to decorate the property, and that’s about it. But over time the “creepy clown” trope became a thing, and books and movies like “It” pushed clowns into the realm of the truly scary. So the motel seems to have decided to swim with the tide and play up the creepy aspects of their clown theme. Oh, and did I mention that the motel sits right next door to an ancient cemetery? I’m not making this up.
Over the years, the place has developed something of a cult following. Many people have sent in their own clown memorabilia, which now numbers over 2000 items. Many of the pieces are on display in the lobby, which doubles as a “clown museum.” The motel has also been featured on the television show “Ghost Adventures” in 2015. Supposedly a clown doll was caught on film moving by itself. You can judge for yourself!
The current owner, Vijay Mehar, told me that Covid has really put a dent in business, but he’s making a go of it. He’s even amping up the scary clown vibe, decorating a few of the rooms with themes such as the “Halloween” room, the “Friday the 13th” room, and the “Exorcist” room. Again, I’m not making this up.
Vijay encouraged me to go take a walk through the neighboring graveyard, which butts up against the Clown Motel’s parking lot. It’s one of those desert cemeteries which lack trees, grass, or any other signs of life. I was surprised that Vijay hadn’t placed a few zombie clowns around the cemetery, in order to further advance the creepy clown vibe of his property.
Having pretty much exhausted the coulrobic aspects of Tonopah, I once again hit the road. Within 45 minutes I encountered the remarkably well-maintained, historic town of Goldfield (pop: 250). As the name suggests, Goldfield had started out as a gold mining encampment. The mines produced about $1 billion in gold (in today’s dollars.) The rich gold veins turned Goldfield into a boom town, and for a time it was Nevada’s largest city. Goldfield boasted some 20,000 residents at its peak in 1906. One of those residents in 1904 and 1905 was Virgil Earp (Wyatt’s brother), who was the town’s deputy sheriff.
A fire in 1923 destroyed much of Goldfield. Since gold production had become much less profitable by that point, there wasn’t much reason for people to rebuild their homes in the town. Those who did remain steadily declined until only a few hundred people were left in 1950, and Goldfield has limped along ever since.
Today Goldfield has just a handful of residents, but the town exudes a strength and robustness that belies its scant population. This is town that clearly values its history. The Goldfield Historical Society is a local nonprofit organization that actively works to preserve and restore Goldfield’s buildings and to promote its history. They’ve erected markers and plaques, organized walking tours, and held various fundraisers. You can see evidence of their work on almost every block.
Goldfield High School is one of the historical society’s biggest projects. It was built in 1907, and its three stories served up to 450 high school students. The school closed in 1952, and it’s been shuttered ever since. After a half-century of neglect, the south wall collapsed, and efforts to save the structure finally began in earnest. The historical society has received grants and donations toward a full restoration of the building, which is ongoing.
Another major restoration effort focuses on the Goldfield Hotel. It’s a huge structure, and in surprisingly good shape considering it was built in 1907, survived a flood and a fire, and has been vacant since World War II.
Ownership of the hotel has changed several times in recent years, and plans to make it into a boutique hotel seem to have fallen through. But I saw clear evidence of active restoration work when I visited. Oh, and that same Ghost Adventures show that went to the Clown Motel also has been to the Goldfield Hotel, and claim that they’ve seen evidence of hauntings. A local resident told me that the Ghost Adventures team had recently come back just a few months ago to do another feature on the hotel.
Anyway, it feels like there are historic structures all over this town. And I’m told that every single one of them has a current owner who’s either restored it or is planning to do so. Why does Goldfield have all this energy and civic pride, while towns like Luning and Mina have essentially disappeared?
On the outskirts of town is a quite different type of attraction. The International Car Forest of the Last Church is a public art installation (I guess). It started when local resident Mark Rippie for some reason decided to stand a car on its nose in the desert outside Goldfield. This “art installation” was noticed by artist Chad Sorg as he was passing along Route 95, and Sorg was so taken by the piece that he settled in Goldfield to help Rippie expand the single car into a “forest” of abandoned cars. (I’m assuming that controlled substances played a part in the decisionmaking.) Today the “forest” includes over 40 vehicles, all of which are regularly covered and re-covered with graffiti by visitors. (The International Car Forest of the Last Church in fact encourages that behavior.) I hate to sound like a Philistine, but isn’t this all highly derivative of the much more famous and whimsical Cadillac Ranch?
Yes. Well. So, after studying each vehicle with my arms behind my back and muttering “I can feel what the artist is trying to say,” like a hippie version of Woody Allen, I left the Forest and got back on US 95. After my enjoyable and engaging visit to Goldfield, I was back in the mode of speeding along endless miles of desert and an unchanging horizon. After a little over an hour I saw a large yellow sign ahead and, as I was about due for a break, I figured I’d make a stop.
As we all know, prostitution is legal in Nevada. Has been since 1971. You just have to conduct your activity in a licensed brothel. So, here we have the confusingly-punctuated “Angel’s Ladies” brothel, which has been around (under various names) for over a century. (Yes, evidently it operated illegally until 1971.) The place has been closed since 2014.
Alert readers might notice the wreckage of a small plane not far from the sign.
Well, there’s a story to it. It seems the brothel’s owners decided to run a promotion in 1978: They got this plane, and let volunteers parachute out of the plane from a low altitude over the property. If the jumper managed to land on a mattress that had been put on the ground, they won a free night at the brothel with the woman of their choice. Unfortunately, the pilot had some trouble during the promotion and crashed the plane right where you see it today. The owners evidently figured that it was worth more as a roadside attraction than as scrap, so they left it where it crash-landed. (News reports say that no one was hurt in the crash.)
Angel’s Ladies Brothel is just north of the town of Beatty, which is otherwise not notable. After passing Beatty, I started to plan (better late than never) on the remainder of my route. I decided that I didn’t want to go all the way to Las Vegas, as it really isn’t the kind of city that I’ve been seeking out on these trips. So I made a last-minute decision to leave US 95 and cut northwest through Death Valley and then take US 395 home. Those segments have been the subject of other blogs (like this and this), so I won’t detail the rest of the trip, except to say that Death Valley in the fall is stunning, and US 395 always affords awesome views of the eastern Sierras.
I’d also say that US 95 — at least the segment of it that I took through Nevada — is an interesting, stress-free, pleasant enough highway for those looking for such things. And I’m sure there were plenty of roadside attractions and stories that I missed, so I’d encourage you go out there and find some more!
Chasing Phantoms 