I have driven Hwy 50 several times, passing through Ely, Austin, Eureka, and finally Fallon, Nevada. Recently National Geographic published a photo essay on the route, dubbed in 1986 by Life Magazine as the “Loneliest Road in America.” I’m crediting National Geographic for the following text. The rest of the images are mine.
“Where the state of Nevada folds in half—from the elbow on its western arm at Lake Tahoe across to its Utah border—you’ll find the most direct route across the state. It crosses several communities, a handful of mountain ranges, a national park, and one reservoir, where bobcats, foxes, and wild horses roam free. There’s life, yes, but not a familiar way of life for many. It’s a place where the lines between John Wayne Westerns and everyday life blur, where ghost towns bleed into living ones. This is Route 50, the Loneliest Road in America.”
Ely, (pronounced “Eelee” with the accent on the first syllable) Nevada, the beginning (or the end), depending on which way you’re driving. We’re heading west, so Ely is the beginning.
Ely’s Hotel Nevada, the tallest building along the route. Margaritas are $.99., rooms $35. We stayed there one night. Even though we were on the top floor the noise was deafening.
Across the street from the Hotel Nevada. Our room also included a free drink at the bar across #50.
Ely
Gwen and her husband own a ranch an hour away from Eureka. She brings her kids to town for school before going to work as a court reporter in Eureka, Nevada. Most of the buildings in tiny Eureka were built between 1861 and 1874, including this courtroom which contains the original pot-bellied stove used to heat the room. Cases today mostly center around water rights. The last homicide case was twenty years ago.
The two images on the left are from Ely. The flag is photographed through a window in the courthouse in Eureka.
Continuing National Geographic’s story…”Or so says Life magazine. In July 1986, the publication honored the Statue of Liberty’s 100th birthday and highlighted American superlatives: On one page, the “Cutest” (a toddler actor) appears alongside the “Loneliest Road” below a photo of a seemingly endless highway that reaches across the desert toward the mountains, a lone cowboy on horseback crossing from one side of nothingness to the other. An anonymous AAA counselor is quoted in the article: “We warn all motorists not to drive there, unless they're confident of their survival skills.”
Survival Skills? How do you get by an earthmover that takes up the entire road?
We were fortunate to have found a shoulder wide enough to pull off the road. Hard to imagine meeting this in a canyon when you’re in your RV.
“Rather than keep motorists away, however, the moniker piqued curiosity—thanks in part to the Nevada Commission on Tourism. The public relations director at the time saw an opportunity in the article and released a Highway 50 survival guide the same month the Life article came out, rewarding visitors to the area with a certificate of survival signed by the governor. Highway signs touting the qualifier went up along the route at the same time, and it graduated from opinion to slogan.
That sort of isolation follows Route 50 for almost the entirety of its 400 miles across Nevada, but it’s particularly pronounced along this stretch, the 287 miles between Ely and Fernley designated by Life as the Loneliest Road. Here, you can’t count on cell service or gas stations, on places to eat or even people to wave at as you pass—anything to replace the eeriness of the hungry red desert around you. Even its small towns seemingly materialize and then fade into the distance like a mirage.”
One of those small towns is Austin.
I saw this before the election, thinking it would be down before we passed through again. It wasn’t. After our last trip, July 2019, the signs were gone. Did the owner die? Become disenchanted? Sell the place?
The General Store in Austin. It was closed. I don’t know if it ever opens. A McCain/Palin sticker in the front window, predating the “Make America Great” signs across the street.
“There's just a mystique about Nevada,” says Helming. She moved to Austin, one of the few towns along the highway, in 1981 and today owns a laundromat, a bed and breakfast, and a cafe with her husband, Kip.
“For us, it’s that freedom of living old school, I guess. It’s a whole different way of life. Your community is more dependent on each other. You have to understand, you’re 112 miles from the nearest Walmart; you're 110 miles from the nearest stoplight. You learn a lot of independence.”
“Anybody can go there and look around and say, ‘Wow, this is lonely,’ and then leave and go back to where they came from,” says Svold. “But people who live there, it’s a permanent mindset. The difference is in having the solitude inside you, instead of it being a temporary feeling.”
This is where National Geographic leaves off and I come in. I love the highway, the desert, the skies, the solitude, the long vistas and the empty roads. It all feels good to me.
A trailer, station wagon, and 100 miles in between this resident and his “next door neighbor,”
Jadyne was sleeping beside me as I came across this scene. I was afraid that stopping to take this image would wake her up. I stopped. It did.
It isn’t just the skies that make #50 so wonderful. It’s the unexpected.
Just outside of Ely.
But it’s the landscape itself that is the star of the show. Thunderstorms in the distance.
Sadly missing from Route 50 now near Fallon, Nevada, the western outpost of civilization along the highway, is this tree, one of the few between Ely and Fallon. Its branches were shoes, not leaves. Sadly vandals cut it down. For the shoes? Air Jordans?
