ruins | | Kenneth Benjamin Reed

A weathered vintage red gas pump reading "Go Farther" in front of an old wooden building with faded "Gold Point Nevada Post Office" lettering

Cents Per Gallon

This gas pump is so old it gives a price in only “cents per gallon”.

Seems to reflect the overall situation in Gold Point pretty well… it’s pretty much an open-air museum too. There are a few houses around the area that don’t look abandoned, but also quite a lot of “No Trespassing” signs and fences, too. The Post Office looks like it’s in good shape.

You try to open the door, but it’s apparently locked. So you try knocking… and you hear that same bizarre shuffling inside.

No one ever opens or answers. Whatever that sound was, it doesn’t seem eager to help. That same unsettling feeling… Nothing like that was ever mentioned in the Disney films, you think almost out loud.

You notice the sun is starting to go down; maybe you should just leave the area completely and head towards Tonopah?

Or you can brave the evening here in Gold Point and wait for someone to appear. After all… someone has to live in this town, right?

The rusted, weathered front end of an abandoned vintage truck with a skeletal grille and peeling green paint, in a desert junkyard

Old Truck with Recognizable Face

Okay wow, what happened here?

This truck has a face on it that you somehow recognize… or maybe you’re just quick to anthropomorphize Disney characters onto real vehicles. Either way, this old wreck of a truck has seen some serious action in it’s time. It looks like there’s another interesting truck nearby or you can head over to the Post Office.

The front of a weathered vintage red truck with a rooftop light, parked in the desert

RUSTEZ3

As you approach what you think must be Gold Point, you notice a bunch of old trucks lined up as if on display. Laying on the ground next to this one, you notice a homemade sign that still barely reads “WE SHADOW FORTH…” whatever that means. You can’t help but notice that the truck appears to have an almost cartoonish face to it.

There’s another vaguely familiar truck-face nearby… or you can just Git-R-Done and head over to what looks like the town’s Post Office.

An abandoned gas station with a graffiti-covered facade and collapsed canopy roof, desert mountains in the background

Unleaded Only

You head out of Rhyolite and quickly lose sight of any other buildings. For a few hours it’s just you and the wind, sand and asphalt. Even though you don’t see anything like smoke in the air, a strong burnt-wood smell lingers around what looks like the abandoned husk of some gas station.

A strange silhouette catches your eye… is that a person leaning against the building?

As you close in, you realize the silhouette that caught your eye is just some poster thrown up on the wall. It’s apparently not that old, either… but damned if you can reason what it’s supposed to mean.

It’s still too early to make camp, so you decide to keep heading toward Gold Point Gold Point.

Weathered denim shorts pockets nailed to a wooden post as a makeshift trail register, with a rusted wagon wheel and desert hills behind

Daisy Dukes Was Here

These shorts have seen some wild times, it looks like.

Somebody decided the base of Icara makes a decent altar. Business cards, bottle caps, a busted watch, and now apparently a well-worn pair of daisy dukes- all left behind like the statue’s some kind of confessional.

You’ve got nothing on you worth leaving. Not that you’d leave a business card out here anyway.

Might be worth checking on those ghosts Icara pointed you toward, or you could just get moving before the heat gets any worse.

The stone facade of a ruined general store building, with a faded sign reading "R. Porter 1906" above an empty window frame overlooking the desert

Porter General Store

The Porter Brother’s old general store looks to have had large glass windows so that you could see everything they had for sale.

It was well known that there were saloons all around, so the general store sold “All Things Good But Whiskey”.

It’s not selling anything these days except nostalgia and silence.

From here, you can head back to the open air art gallery or head out of town on the dirt road.

A dirt road leading toward distant mountains, passing old buildings and a utility pole, in a Nevada ghost town

“To Gold Point”

That’s what the last legible sign in Rhyolite offered up, so you pack into your vehicle and start heading out towards this Gold Point.

The road looks pretty sparse, but there are power lines nearby and you see a house in the distance.

Maybe you’ll find help, a drink of something cool and refreshing in this crazy heat… directions back to civilization, even?

Getting to that house was no problem, but you realize pretty quickly that even if they were inside, they had no intention of answering.

You call out hello but nothing… no one responds.

A smashed-up car and assorted parts are rusting about in the yard. Other than the dust devil that whips around every so often, there is absolutely no sign of activity. The door is locked. The windows are intact and covered from the inside.

Knocking on the door, you could have sworn you heard some scuffling sound inside. It was unsettling. You have a feeling that breaking in would be really stupid, so you eventually move on.

Hopefully you’ll find Gold Point before dark.

A vintage bicycle draped in a white sheet styled to look like a ghost, parked on a wooden boardwalk in the desert

Ghost Rider

The ghost has a bike, that much is certain. Where it suggests going is not as clear. The beach cruiser it’s holding onto is missing some pretty important parts and looks to be as permanently stuck here as the ghost statue itself.

You start to wonder if this scene is a little more lively after dark… but you’ve been here a few hours and the sun is still beating down relentlessly, so you consider the options: Head out of town now or stick around a bit longer and check out the old bank ruins.

The tall, roofless stone facade of a ruined multi-story building, with rows of empty window openings against a deep blue sky

Cook’s Bank

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. You can check out the general store nearby.

A weathered red wooden Union Pacific railroad caboose sitting in the desert

Union Pacific Caboose

Looks like this caboose was repurposed into gas station or something before being left to it’s own accord. Other than some still-standing powerlines, not much indicates that it’s been used for anything recently.

You consider entering the caboose, but you can tell that someone has taken effort to prevent entry. The ubiquitous warning signs are posted, and what appears to be a tripwire inside the doorway cues you in on the possibility that the signs aren’t just for show.

Other than some stones, accumulated litter, and what appears to be dozens of small holes burrowed into the dirt floor, you really see nothing inside to risk going in for.

Nearby, a motionless, shrouded white form (ghosts?) appears to beckon you away from this relic.

Will you go inside the caboose anyway, or head over to this ghostly apparition?