miners | | Kenneth Benjamin Reed

An abandoned stone building in a ghost town, with a boarded-up window and an open doorway revealing a rusted antique safe inside

Manhattan Bank Vault

Another bank vault? Looks like these things were built to endure all kinds of intrusion (including time itself).

You don’t think there’s any cool, refreshing drinks inside the rusty old Nye and Ormsby county bank vault so you just press onward. Looks like there’s a tower of some kind nearby and a ruined old building on the cliffside.

Your thirst is getting overwhelming, though… so you can also just leave the town altogether; maybe you’ll have better chances of finding water outside this old canyon?

An empty two-lane highway stretching to the horizon under a bright blue sky, with desert mountains in the distance

Manhattan Boulevard

Wow, this road is much easier to travel on than all the washed-out gravel trails around Luning. It’s hard to believe but it’s even hotter here, too. You’ll need to find water soon.

Looks like up ahead is a small town called Manhattan, Nevada. You wonder if a place like Manhattan has any cold drinks on hand…

A weathered wooden shed in an open desert field, with a fallen dead tree branch draped across it and a cottontail rabbit in the grass nearby

Rabbit Sentry

A rabbit shows up, watching you pass as you leave behind the deserted wreckage of Luning.

You stop for a moment just as he takes a dive into the downed trees nearby. Like so many of the inhabitants of the desert, this rabbit apparently wants no interaction with visitors.

There’s a long asphalt ribbon laid out just ahead- looks like a decent (if lengthy) road leading out into the desert valley.

Twin arched brick doorways in a collapsed stone ruin, framing rubble and open sky

Luning Bank Doors

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.

A stone archway doorway in a ruined desert building, framed against a blue sky

Fort Luning

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.

Collapsed wooden roof beams over a stone ruin, with rubble in the foreground against a barren hillside

Luning Safe

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?

The roofless stone facade of a ruined building with two large window openings, standing alone in the desert

Luning Hotel

No vacancy.

But dig those doorways, right? You consider checking out the bank or the stumpy-walled Fort Luning.

A partially collapsed stone ruin with two arched window openings still visible, walls crumbling into rubble under a wide desert sky

Luning Bank Heist

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.

An aerial view of a collapsed wooden roof structure next to ruined stone walls in a desert ghost town, with a dirt road curving into the distance

Landing in Luning

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.

A weathered wooden cross grave marker backlit by golden sunset light amid tall grass in an old cemetery

GREEK

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.