You’d heard a few stories about Rhyolite, and how it fell into obscurity almost as quickly as it showed up. The three-story John S. Cook Bank on Golden Street represents the story pretty well: this three-story building once had luxuries like marble stairs and stained-glass windows, but the luxuries only lasted as long as the ore flowed freely. 

The town boomed during the Gold Rush with nearly 5000 fortune-seekers settling in from 1907 to about 1911. It had electric lights, water mains, telephones, newspapers, a hospital, a school, an opera house, and a stock exchange. But the nearby mines stopped producing any sizeable ore around 1913.

And by 1920 only 14 people remained. Now there’s not much but a few buildings’ remains and some really interesting art.