The Ghost Town of Rhyolite, Nevada
Near the eastern edge of Death Valley and about 120 miles from Las Vegas lies the ghost town of Rhyolite. It was a mining town that boomed very briefly in the early 1900’s. Unfortunately, the valuable gold ore in the area was quickly exhausted. Afterwards, production dropped and the town dried up almost as fast as it started. The buildings fell into decay and Rhyolite became the ghost town that it is today as well a set for numerous movies. Click below for our adventures in a Nevada ghost town:
Rhyolite the Tourist Attraction
Because it is so close to Death Valley, this place gets a surprising amount of visitation. A few of the crumbled structures have fences around them, but you are free to wander around most of them. Some of the other notable sites are the sculpture garden right when you drive in, the bottle house that we mentioned in the video, and the old train station is basically at the end. There are lots of off road trails and we spotted several old mine shafts via the drone, but we stuck to the main drag.
Where to Stay
Nearby, the town of Beatty prides itself as a great launching place for visiting Death Valley. It’s also really close to Rhyolite and has several RV parks. On top of that, they feed a local heard of wild donkeys (Burros) so you are likely to see quite a few of them there.
We can’t actually vouch for any of the RV parks around Beatty since we haven’t stayed there ourselves. This was our 2nd trip from our holiday home base in Pahrump, so we just drove out for an evening. However, we did boondock for a night just south of Beatty a few weeks earlier on our way through. We stayed on BLM land at a place called Bombo’s Pond and would do so again.
Any questions? Please let us know in the comments so that we can answer them!
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If you’d like to read about our RV and other RV adventures, then check out some of our other posts :
- Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge Visit
- Eugene Oregon | Covered Bridges and Beach Trip
- Bonneville Salt Flats & Lemoille Canyon
- Buckhorn Wash | Pictographs and Canyons
- The Wedge + Little Grand Canyon
- Kootenai Swinging Bridge & Falls | Montana National Forest Boondocking
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