Rhyolite ghost town and Ladd Mountain

Rhyolite Historic Area, Tonopah BLM

(map link)

From Walker Lake, I took off south wanting to be set up to climb Corkscrew Peak. That gave me the whole afternoon to check out Rhyolite before finding somewhere to camp. The area itself is day use only, but there's a lot of surrounding Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, so that isn't terribly hard. I started out at the cemetery (south from the area shown on the map above), where there is a geocache. It's a nice one that requires one to find information on the gravestones to get the location of the hide outside the actual cemetery but nearby. It seemed like an excellent way to do such a thing. None of the original markers from when it was a town can be read (or, often, found) now, but a few people have been giving more modern markers.

The Bullfrog-Rhyolite Cemetery is fairly blank, but not empty. The monument in the middle is a general one set in 1959.

Most the graves are only marked by the heaped rocks now.

Then I continued up the road to the town. There's various parking all through town along the side of the road, so I just pulled over somewhat randomly and got to walking about. People had big plans for Rhyolite so they built big to make them happen. Reality had different ideas for the future of this town. Although it was given every advantage, it did not last long. Now there are grand shells falling into themselves.

What's left of some major buildings along the road. There are signs along the way to tell what each was.

Window shopping in Rhyolite.

Three stories of bank building, very up to date.

The train depot was particularly fancy and had its uses since, most recently as a casino.

The other side of the train depot and an abandoned caboose.

I let the geocache hiders direct me a little more. There was one way up on the side of a hill near a mine with promises of a grand view of Rhyolite. It turned out to be quite near an old mine. The area is full of old mines.

The city resembles the cemetery. There's a few scattered things you can see from a distance and if you get close enough, you can see the old roads marking off blocks.

There was another up at the top of a nearby named peak, Ladd Mountain. I stopped back by the car to get on some real shoes, then wandered through some of the side streets toward the small mountain.

Ladd Mountain showing trail that climbs partway up.

There are buildings along these side streets too.

I aimed at some rather well used trail up the side of the mountain. I could see that it got to an old mine shaft and there were more above. There was no trail all the way up, but it clearly gets a little bit of travel.

The first mine along the trail I selected.

Perhaps a better overview view of Rhyolite.

My best look at the Goldwell Open Air Museum along the road in, which is cute and all but didn't strike my fancy.

I had to start scrambling a little up the steep ridge once I ran out of trails. I didn't quite seem to run out of little mine shafts to pass by. Most were cordoned off in some way.

Another hole where someone thought there might be riches hidden.

Squared off walls in some hard rocks. Each hole is quite different.

Once at the top of the steep section, I still had a bit to go to the actual top. The mountain is long and climbs gradually to the south. There are points along the way to get over, but I chose to go around to the east side. This meant following along beside a fence and looking down into the huge pit of a modern mine as I went.

A modern mine over on the other side of Ladd Mountain. Spot the difference between what can be done with some hand tools and what can be done with power tools.

At the top and looking "further" from the point of view of having come from the other direction.

The pit of the modern mine and the mountains to the east.

Looking back the way I came from the north.

West to California.

After a short while on the peak, I headed down past the geocache, which took a little bit more time to actually find. Then I proceeded down a nearer ridge to the peak. This was steeper and had less trail except for the slide near the bottom where ATVs had been tearing it up.

The valley between the two ridges has some very visible tailings to the upper right.

I wasn't done looking at the town and stopped by a few more spots once I was on nearly flat ground once more.

Still standing strong. A good roof has preserved these adobe based walls.

The more usual result of building with adobe is that it dissolves back into the dirt like these two buildings.

And with the gathering gloom, I was off to find a place for a snooze.

*photo album*




©2022 Valerie Norton
Written 20 Mar 2022