RHYOLITE: Ghost town of broken dreams

Several structures still stand in Rhyolite, though most are in various states of decay, and others resemble mere fragments. Nearly a century ago, it was Nevada's third-largest city, assembled by the fragments of grunt, sweat and tears from its townsfolk. It was built upon the dreams of western pioneers, but now it stands as a creaking monument to hard, desert life in the early 20th century.

Such were the trappings of many Nevada ghost towns back then: hard work, long hours of mining, and the lure of hidden gold. Rhyolite indeed had the precious metal, and many seekers came in search of it. But miners quickly discovered the gold was sparse, and everyone moved on a short time later.

Today, Rhyolite's relics can be examined by taking a 110-mile drive up U.S. Highway 95 from Las Vegas to Beatty, then veering onto Nevada Route 374 and traveling west four miles.

The ruins of the town reveal it was meant to be more than a transitory boomtown, according to Suzy McCoy, Rhyolite caretaker and historical curator at the Beatty Museum. Each structure was made from permanent materials, and each had a different architectural style.

McCoy said that, in the family of Nevada mining towns from the early 1900s, Rhyolite is the "next-best haunting spot," second only to the town of Rachel.

Legend has it that at least two of the structures in Rhyolite house spiritual dwellers. In Nevada mining towns, these ghostly whispers are passed on from generation to generation for one simple reason.

"People like to romanticize," McCoy said. "In reality, this town was very large, it was very noisy, it was dirty, it was smelly -- there was nothing romantic about it. The people who lived here, they worked 10 to 15 hours a day, life was hard, women were hard. They couldn't be fragile any more than men could -- not and live out here."

What started it all was the discovery of gold on Aug. 4, 1904. People came to Rhyolite in droves after that, setting up tents while they mined for the metal. The town soon had a newspaper, grocery store, bank and several other small businesses.

In the spring of 1906, the building boom began, and the town grew to more than 3,000 residents, according to McCoy, and permanent structures replaced the tent homes. During its "boom years," the town featured an opera house, a symphony, baseball teams, tennis courts, three swimming pools, two undertakers, two hospitals, two dentists, 19 lodging houses, 18 grocery stores, two churches and, of course, more than 50 saloons.

The boom lasted until 1912. Seven years later, Rhyolite became a certified ghost town. For many, life had proven a nightmare of hard, unrewarding strife.

"Rhyolite was strange -- they were looking for pockets of gold," McCoy said. "There was not nearly enough gold to support the amount of people who lived here. Also, there was no water, so they had to bring water in mechanically over the mountains to get water into the town.

"Rhyolite's downfall was that it had only pockets of gold -- there were no really rich veins, and no water. So, when the miners moved on, people didn't have the money to repair water pipes or pay electric bills. Everything got shut down."

The ill-fated Cook Bank was the most notable casualty. Looked upon as the centerpiece of the town, the three-story structure cost a whopping $90,000 to build, and after the town's decline, the bank's originators recouped only $3,000 of their original investment.

During the town's final years, its post office was moved into the basement of the vacated bank. In 1919, the mail service became the final business to close. Rhyolite then began its life as a deserted landmark, and had barely survived a 14-year existence.

"It's the basic story in mining towns: they boom quickly, they collapse quickly, and the people that sold the stocks walk away with the money," McCoy said.

But in the ensuing years, Rhyolite gradually became repopulated -- by ghosts. Many visitors have attested to this. Though McCoy cannot verify the spooks, she can offer a less supernatural explanation for them.

"Sometime during the '60s, there was a body found in the Cook Bank building," she said. "Nobody knows how it got there, nobody knows who it was. And there's been a lot of people who say they `feel' something at the Cook Bank. Of course, during the heyday, around that area, there were a few people killed."

Another example would be the grave of Isabella Haskins, a prostitute who was buried about 100 yards from the Rhyolite jailhouse, which, by the way, was where "Old Joe," the town's one-eyed drunk, died.

Over the years, some visitors have set up camp near the jail, but do not stay long enough to pitch a tent.

"Lots of times, they would come running up here saying, `Gee, you've got to find us a new campsite,'" McCoy said. "They've either seen Isabella or heard `Old Joe' singing. So, for people who are wannabe psychics or who have a great imagination, the grave is a good area to start."

McCoy has heard nothing more than rumors of the haunting of the Bottle House, which is one of the town's unique structures. It was a house constructed by a man named Tom Kelly, who spent 5 1/2 months building it. Why so long? He used almost nothing except 30,000 bottles.

The Bottle House, along with the train station, are the edifices that have best withstood the test of time and still look relatively complete. The rest of Rhyolite has crumbled significantly in less than one century's time.

Town folklore, however, will likely stand firm for many more decades -- thanks in part to everyone's need for supernatural stories, as well as historic facts.

"It's a ghost town. You cannot have a ghost town without a ghost -- that's a rule," McCoy said. "If they come to a ghost town, they want to hear about the killing of the cop on the corner of Colorado and Broadway, or they want to hear of the ladies that walk the sidewalks in the silks and pearls.

"So every ghost town, no matter where it is, has a ghost and ghost stories attached to it."LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL AND SUN ¥ SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2002

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