Jim Colbert Memorial Road Trip, Part 1 - Is It Time for Bed Yet?
June 18/19, 2009 – It begins….
By the time our first mile rolls onto the odometer it is well past midnight and I haven’t slept since the night before. Courtney had been called into action along with her house which was serving as a movie set for the day, keeping us from getting started any earlier. Given the circumstances, with the anniversary of my father’s passing falling on that night, I did not want to set out any later. I wanted to be away from the city, I wanted to be somewhere where I had a stronger connection with him and his memory, and for me that meant the open road, having taken so many road trips with him in these later years. My original plans had called for a nap between getting off of work and hitting the road, recharging the batteries just a bit before undertaking 500 miles worth of driving in two states with at least five different sightseeing stops, but as they say about the best laid plans…and so it was, having been awake for the last 18 hours with the next opportunity to sleep being at least 15 hours away that we struck out on the second annual Jim Colbert Memorial Road Trip.
Our Route - Day 1…
The excitement to once again be out on the open road, heeding the call, is enough to keep me going for a bit. Courtney fills me in on the events of the movie filming day, we chat about the plans for the trip, and then she begins to fade. I make it a little further on the Coke that I’ve been drinking and then it hits me how long a night I am actually in for, my eyelids start to get a bit heavy. As the miles roll beneath our wheels, I grow increasingly jealous of Courtney, curled up in the seat next to me. She’s offered to take over any time I need it and I know she would do it, but I couldn’t ask her to. This is my ridiculous schedule, my irrational need to be away from the city that night, my ritual of remembrance. I am thrilled that I am not doing this alone, but in my mind this is my cross to bear and so I yawn, and fidget, and do what it takes to remain awake.
We’re heading east out of Los Angeles, through Barstow and on to Baker, California – home to the world’s largest thermometer. Having begun its history as a stop on the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad just over a century ago it is fitting that this small town now serves mainly as a way station on the route to Las Vegas. Baker marks our departure from the Interstate Highway System and serves as a good opportunity to get out and stretch the legs (and eyelids) a bit. Despite not needing it yet, I also decide to stop for gas as well. I’m still a bit anxious over a previous road trip that found me driving on a very quiet and infrequently traveled back road in the middle of the Mohave desert with my gas light on and absolutely no cell phone reception hoping beyond all hope that I wouldn’t fall prey to the unforgiving desert. After several agonizing miles with not so much as a glimmer of civilization I thankfully managed to make it back onto a highway and eventually to gas while vowing to never to do that again. Since we were about to head north on Death Valley Road, I figured that this would be a good time to ensure that I kept my promise to myself.
Gas topped off and legs stretched we head north, still in the dark of night. We’ve got a ways to go before we start seeing seriously daylight, but thankfully it isn’t too long before I begin to notice a bit of definition on the horizon, the sky starting to distinguish itself from the land. It’s not often that I get to watch the sunrise in the desert and I am looking forward to seeing it come up. As an added bonus, more light makes it a lot easier to stay awake. As the landscape slowly gains more detail I am reminded of other road trips. This is familiar terrain. While we never traveled this particular road, I spent a lot of time in this desert with my father. Through countless hours of watching the desert pass by I have come to love it, to want to seek out the few remaining treasures that it holds. I’ve said before how in my childhood the trip was a necessary evil to get to the destination and I can’t help but think I would have found the desert more evil than other byways. Now I find the landscape incredibly beautiful and while I believe that the beauty is always there it is a lot more difficult to see when the midday sun is beating down and washing all color out, muting the scenery to drab shades of gray and brown. As the sun continues to rise I get to see the desert in all of its glory, in the gorgeous magic hour just after sunrise when the light is at its most golden coaxing the desert to offer up vibrant oranges, reds, yellows, and even greens to complement the ever-present grays and browns. I know this appreciation comes from my father and that makes me miss him even more. I pull over to throw my full attention onto the dawning day. The rising sun marks the beginning of my third year without him.
The Sky Separates From the Land…
Desert Morning…
Crossing into Nevada we stumble across the first unexpected sight of the trip. A magnificently large cow. I am tickled as I slow down enough to turn around and head into the parking lot of the Longstreet Casino of Amargosa Valley. I had researched potential roadside attractions along our planned route and somehow managed to overlook this beauty. Having passed up the opportunity to document my stop at the world’s largest thermometer, I figure it would not be very fitting of me to also neglect the world’s not quite largest but still pretty big cow (a little research tells me that there is a 38 foot tall cow in North Dakota – this little Bessie was maybe 12 feet on a good day). Driving away I’m glad that I hadn’t turned this attraction up in my research. The unexpected find was much more delightful.
Bessie…
Back on the road we make our way toward the first official stop on the itinerary – Carrara, Nevada – and I find it’s time for more reflection. I’ve been down these roads before, having passed this way on the last road trip I took with my father. On that trip we stopped at a sight that I thought was Carrrara, but which I later learned was an old cement plant built and abandoned in the 1930’s, never used due to the Great Depression. I’m not sure whether or not my father knew that it wasn’t the town site of Carrara when he took us there. This time around I intended to remedy having missed the town, having found better directions to the site. Pulling off the main road I head up a fairly rough dirt road, considering not for the first time the absurdity of off roading in a Dodge Caravan. We pass some small ruins in the distance but based on what I’ve read I believe that there is more further up the road and so press on. The road narrows, gets rougher and rockier and still I push forward, foolishly passing spots that would make a good point to turn around, spots that are becoming fewer and further in-between. I finally stop for a long moment of internal debate – I want to press forward, knowing that my father would have, but not knowing how much further there is to go and becoming ever more aware of the limitations of my car. What would my dad do? Eventually I call it quits and can’t help but feel a little disappointed in myself. I know it’s ridiculous, but I can’t help but feel that this in someway dishonors the memory of my father. Never mind that he did the same thing many times on our road trips, this is somehow different in my mind. Having passed the last widening of the road some time ago we end up having to reverse down the hill, something I have never been all that good at but which I manage to do without much trouble. We finally make it to a slightly wider section of the road and after a five or six point turn we are able to proceed without my having to strain my neck looking over my shoulder. So as to not leave completely empty handed I make a quick stop to check out the small ruins we had passed earlier. Courtney is still not quite awake so I make the short trek off the road over to the structure and am once again reminded of my father – many was the time that he would strike off to check something out while my sister and I milled about the car. I reach the structure, which turns out to be a chimney, snap a few photos and head back to the car. There’s really not much to see.
Lonely Chimney…
Still being fairly early in the morning and not quite time for breakfast I figure we should pop over to the cement factory, which is less than a mile up the road. Even though it’s not the town site I was looking for, it is still an impressive bit of abandonment and worth another look. Plus it falls into a theme that these trips have taken on, connecting with my father across time – reliving experiences that we had shared as a way to remember him. A way to pay homage, revisiting sites that I never would have been to the first time had it not been for him. Little has changed at the fake Carrara since I was last there almost three years ago. A long expanse of crumbling grey concrete with a few supporting structures spread around the perimeter. Knowing nothing of the cement making process, I don’t have an inkling of what the purpose of each structure would have been. Obviously, and sadly, it is a popular spot for gun enthusiasts and graffiti artists – as many of these abandoned sites are. Since the last time new graffiti has proclaimed it to be both Hell and “a little slice of home,” neither of which I feel are accurate descriptions. Too fascinating to be Hell and to industrial to be home. My mind wanders back, trying to imagine the site in its prime, remembering my last visit….I shoot a few more pictures and proclaim that it is now time for breakfast.
The Cement Factory…
Hell “a little slice of home”…
Hell “a little slice of home” Detail…
A few more miles and we are in Beatty, Nevada. I can’t remember specifically having been here before when we first drive into town, though I know I have since it lies directly between Carrara and Rhyolite, both of which were visited the last time I had come this way. As we drive around, looking for a place to eat breakfast I catch glimpses of buildings that slowly stir up some memories. The motel that we stayed at, the now defunct casino where I won $80 on a nickel slot machine. We find a little greasy spoon restaurant and have breakfast with the locals. The food is nothing to write home about but the natives are entertaining. I feel very out of place as I take in the three old men sitting at the next table, obviously hardened by life in the desert, clearly cut from a different cloth than I am. I am very much a city boy who could in no way pass as a local. We contemplate what makes a person live in a place like this and I wonder whether I could survive as a hardened desert dweller. What would my life have been like had I been born into this environment. Like many of the smaller towns in the Nevada desert it feels a little dead, like the desert is winning out, reclaiming the land. Everywhere you look you see more abandoned buildings, more signs of the passing of a way of life. If I lived here what would I be doing now, what would my dreams be, what would I think of the big city tourists wandering through town and staring at me while I ate my breakfast. In the end I’m glad that I didn’t have to find out.
We move on, heading a short way out of town to our next stop, Rhyolite, Nevada. I had been there before but not having been in the drivers seat I couldn’t remember exactly how we got there. I seemed to remember a bit of off roading so didn’t think anything of taking the dirt road I had found on Google maps - though several forks in the road later I was fairly certain that we were no longer traveling in the right direction. Once again I had to decide – press on or turn back. Once again I wished that my dad was in the drivers seat. He always seemed to make the right decision. Weighing my options and feeling pretty certain that we weren’t going to reach Rhyolite I turned back. On the main road I decided to head just a little further down and not two miles on we passed a road sign pointing the way to Rhyolite, right down a nicely paved road. …it always seemed so effortless when my father was in charge. Driving up that road it was what I remembered. The town had begun as a mining camp in early 1905 and reached an estimated population of 3,500 to 5,000 souls two to three years later. Its rapid rise was equaled by its rapid decline with the population dwindling to less than 1,000 in 1911 and down to zero by 1920. Since then it has been given over to time and tourism. The now abandoned train depot was converted into a casino and then a museum, which ran up into the 1970’s. It now sits behind a fence – tantalizingly close, but oh so out of reach. Several less intact structures dot the side of the main road through “town”. The skeletal remains of the bank and schoolhouse.
The Cook Bank Building…
The Rhyolite School…
More lie off the road, further down a small hill. Some efforts to restore and maintain the town have been undertaken, the most notable being Tom Kelly’s Bottle House (old bottles were used to make the walls) which has been rebuilt and restored several times. There are other people around, which is to be expected with a site so close to the main road, so easy to reach, but I wish they weren’t there. They remind me how much of a tourist that I am in these places. I have no illusions that I belong here, but when we are alone, I feel more connected, more like I can blend in with the landscape. Seeing other people stick out like a sore thumb and I realize that I do the same. Plus I don’t want to share the site. I want the site to be mine. I want to be able to look out at the ruins uninterrupted by reminders of our modern world, try to imagine the site in its heyday as I had done with the cement factory. As we head back out of town we stop on the outskirts at the Goldwell Open Air Museum, an outdoor sculpture park with sculptures that stand in stark contrast to the decay of the town, yet at the same time managing to work with the town, especially the eerie spectral shrouds which form an interpretation of the last supper or one who is preparing to ride a bike.
Biking Shroud…
More road, more miles, more desert. We are into the heat of the day, which thankfully is not nearly as bad as it could have been. It wasn’t crisp, cool, autumn weather by any stretch of the imagination, but we aren’t sweltering either. The next stop, Bonnie Claire, Nevada, was new to me. Like pretty much all of the ghost towns in the area, Bonnie Claire grew as support to a mining operation. A mill was built around 1904 and later rebuilt in 1913, which is the main structure left standing today. Unfortunately on arrival we are greeted with a one of the ubiquitous barbed wire fences and a fairly prominent “No Trespassing” sign. Still being fairly close to the road and with a structure which looked lived in just across the small road that we came in on I’m weary of venturing in beyond the fence, despite a gaping hole that would have allowed me to drive through if I wanted. We take some pictures, and sit contemplating the mill ruins from a distance.
The Mill Ruins - From a Distance…
While we sit there a couple of German tourists roll up and I am amazed at how far someone will come to see what seems to be such an insignificant site. I’m not sure why this is so odd to me, knowing full well that if I were to ever find myself in Southern Spain I would make every effort to track down and visit the still standing sets where they shot many of Leone’s spaghetti westerns…but still, for some reason, I was surprised to see them. After getting their own photos they move on. Once again by ourselves and before we also move on I take a few tentative steps inside the fence and take some shots of a structure just inside. It’s nowhere near the mill, which is what I really wanted to see, but having a very low guilt threshold and knowing that I would be a mess the entire time I was in there I settle for these shots.
No Trespassing…
Tantalizingly close to being able to shut my eyes for a bit and done with the small out of the way sites we turn toward our next stop. Another hour through the desert and we end up in Goldfield, Nevada. Despite being the Esmeralda County seat, Goldfield houses only 200 or so people and feels more like a ghost town than an active one. Driving through town every other building seems to be vacant, some empty long enough that they are falling apart, crumbling to the ground.
Nobody is Home…
Old Buiding, New Bench…
The scale of decay is also larger than it was in Beatty. The Municipal High School – vacant since the 1950’s – sits fenced off and looking ready to collapse in on itself. A plea for restoration funds is posted nearby, and has been there since at least six years ago when I first passed through town. The large four story Goldfield Hotel sitting on the main street has been vacant since the 1940’s, though remains in much better condition than the high school. Every way you look you are confronted with more decay, more reminders of a glory that is long gone. We have a picnic lunch sitting on the steps of the hotel, watching the occasional car pass by. It is a dead town but not without charm and whether due to having been here before with my father or some unknown reason, I am a little smitten with it. I wouldn’t want to live there, but I sure do like passing through. Before moving on we stop in a small market to pick up some ice for the cooler. Two old men are sitting and smoking out front and we pause to have a few words. They seem to fit well in the town, two old relics in an old relic. More examples of the hardened folk who make their home in the middle of the desert. They ask us how we like the town, note what wonderful photo opportunities there are, and hint at some real ghosts they believe are in some of the abandoned buildings. I would love to have the time to sit and listen to them for hours, hear what they had to say about the town and their history there, but I know if I were to sit long enough my brain would shut down and I would be lost to sleep.
School’s Out Forever…
The Goldfield Hotel…
Another half hour up the road and we reach our final destination of the day – Tonopah, Nevada. In contrast to Goldfield, Tonopah is still relatively lively. Sharing common backgrounds, both cities having sprung up around gold and silver mines, both serving as county seats, Tonopah has managed to remain a more active town, thanks in part to the nearby Tonopah Test Range (also known as Area 52 and neighbor to the infamous Area 51) which has served as a more constant source of employment for the denizens of the town. While there are a handful of abandoned buildings, and one large old and empty hotel/casino, Tonopah is home to several active casinos, more than a handful of motels, and a modern high school (not to mention their very own McDonalds). We take a short drive through town, weighing our lodging options but knowing that the only choice is the Clown Motel, both due to past road trips and its proximity to the restaurant and casino that will serve as the choice for the memorial dinner and nickel slot gambling which will occur later in the evening. Happy to finally be off the road we get our room and I finally kick up my feet a mere 33 hours and nearly 500 miles since I last slept. While the day is not done, for the moment I am as I let the events of the day and those of this day two years ago wash over me. Much more is coming, but for now I rest.
Our Host for the Evening…
After a brief rest - knowing that to allow myself any more will be to abandon myself to sleep for the night - and phone calls of remembrance to the rest of my family, Courtney and I venture out into the world one more time. The weather has turned and we are blessed with a little rain, a spectacular horizon burning sunset, and a heat lightning show. I breathe deep and enjoy the smell of the desert rain, a very enticing fragrance.
Sunset or Deadly Fire?…
Our evening’s entertainment had been decided for us many years ago, when dinner at El Marques Mexican restaurant and a few goes on the slots at the Ban¢ Club became a Colbert road trip tradition when passing through Tonopah. After margaritas and slots, we head back to the motel. Drained from the drive as well as the emotions of the day the time has finally come for me to close my eyes and surrender to the sandman.
Continue to Part 2…
Click on photos for larger views.
For more photos, visit my flickr page…
For earlier shots of Carrara or Goldfield please follow the links…
