The steel doors and cut stones that make up the front of this bank are the only façade left intact, probably because of the frames that held these huge steel doors…. Pretty metal. Check out the safe while you’re here, or you can take off from this dusty place and head back towards a less bumpy road.
Well, fine… it probably wasn’t a fort after all. Bulky, yes; the bigger rocks that this building was made of gave it a kind of fortified look from a distance. But upon closer inspection, you realize it was probably just the local warehouse. Cool looking rubble, broken glass, and this doorway. That’s it, though.
There’s the bank nearby that you can check out, or you can leave Luning and head down the road a little further.
So this is what a safe looks like after blowing the door off with dynamite…
The safe itself is barely still here, and there’s really nothing inside but rubble. Pretty cool view of that Lunar-landscape hill from here (is this where the town got it’s name?) but that’s really it.
Do you check out the front of the building or see what this “Fort Luning” is?
No vacancy.
But dig those doorways, right? You consider checking out the bank or the stumpy-walled Fort Luning.
It seems this bank is no longer FDIC insured.
Either the wind or a very destructive bank heist took most of the walls and the roof down. It looks like there’s still an old safe lying among the rubble.
You also consider checking out the only wall (still standing) at the very front of the building.
Tempus fugit (Time flees).
But you feel a lot better getting some miles between yourself and that old graveyard. The desert feels indifferent, if not completely inhospitable. Seeing so many dead in one small spot, all dying in such short time and over some mysterious “plague” that even today is unknown in origin…. It was just too vivid of a reminder that you really are only visiting this place.
Even these stoic buildings of stone and wood built upon the backs of salty, driven old-timers… are all in total ruin a few generations later.
There isn’t much left to check out here in Luning, Nevada. But while you’re here, right? There’s a few old buildings to take a look closer at: the bank, the hotel, and what looks like an old cabin.
That graveyard was weird. It wasn’t worth sticking around to see what adventure might occur.
You have since been driving for several hours since leaving Tonopah; you didn’t really care that the same road that brought you in would only continue further into the desert terrain… so long as you could shake off the foreboding feeling of being anywhere near that old cemetery.
Before bedding down for the night, you enjoy the moon’s reflection on all the reflective bits of quartz (mica?) embedded in the asphalt; It almost mirrors the starry sky.
By noon tomorrow you should make it to Luning, Nevada. Hopefully there’s less creepiness there.
You walk around inside the cemetery for a few dozen paces, trying hard not to actually step on the graves. There’s just so many… and all are packed about as close together as they can be without basically being right on top of each other.
A lot of the gravestones are in various states of disrepair and a few (like this one) are really strange… this is a lone plank of wood with a couple of screws sticking out of it marking the remains with one conclusive, five-letter word: GREEK …and that’s all it says.
It must mean something to someone, but not you. This place is starting to feel really weird, almost noisy.
You beat a hasty retreat, considering the setting sun and all-too-vivid thoughts of ghosts.
It’s kind of hard not noticing this insanely packed little graveyard on your way into Tonopah. There’s several hundred graves, and it looks like they were filled in only ten years.
There’s a metal placard that says some fourteen miners fell victim to the Tonopah-Belmont Mine fire of February 23, 1911. The others all appear to be Tonopah’s pioneer residents who fell victim to a mysterious 1902 “Tonopah Plague”. The placard goes on to say that no one ever could figure out where this plague came from or what it really was, just that it killed most of the town off.
The sun’s going down. You can check out a grave up close or just continue on past the graveyard.
The road that leads out to Tonopah doesn’t look that different from the one that got you to Rhyolite… have you actually been driving in a circle?
Oh, right. Your map is decent, but faded. After studying it for a bit, you realize that this really is the same highway. It starts to sink in just how easy it is to get lost out in the open desert expanse; so many landmarks look so similar, almost like being on the open ocean.
You glance down another dirt road heading east off this road… but quickly get over the idea. Sticking to these highways is much better than trying to detangle yourself from the spiderweb of dirt roads that lead off in every direction. You’ve given a few of those dusty roads a thought, but this map of yours would be almost useless out there.
You get back in and drive. The mile markers slowly tick down the highway miles as you persist deep into the heart of Nevada.