Last updated on .
Rhyolite is a ghost town in the Nevada desert. It’s a short drive from the town of Beatty and a popular stop for visitors to Death Valley National Park. It sits on a mixture of federal and private land, and is 35 miles from the Furnace Creek visitor center.
History of Rhyolite
On August 9, 1904, Shorty Harris and Ed Cross found gold on the south side of a hill called Bullfrog Mountain. Rhyolite was founded in January 1905 as a two-man camp, and within two weeks it had attracted 1,200 people. By June 1905, it had more than double to over 2,500. At that time, it already had saloons, gambling houses, barbers, restaurants, a public bath house, and a weekly newspaper. There was even a red light district attracting women from as far away as San Francisco.
Of the over 2,000 claims, the most promising was the Montgomery Shoshone Mine, which was founded by Bob Montgomery. Charles Schwab (1862-1939) purchased the mine in February 1906 and invested heavily in both the mine and the town. Railroad transportation began on December 14, 1906. Electricity arrived in April 1907, and there was also plumbing. The Rhyolite Mining Stock Exchange opened on March 25, 1907.
At its peak in 1907, Rhyolite had a population of almost 5,000. The town had concrete sidewalks, telephones and telegraph lines, four banks, hotels, daily newspapers, fire and police stations, a school, an ice plant, two electric plants, foundries, machine shops, a miner’s union hospital, a public pool, two churches, and an opera house. An active social scene included baseball games, dances, variety shows, symphonies, and pool tournaments. Unfortunately, it was the beginning of the end as mine production began to fall.
Decline of Rhyolite
By 1910, the Montgomery Shoshone Mine was operating at a loss and there were only 611 residents. The mine closed on March 14, 1911. All three banks closed by March 1910, the newspapers shut down by June 1912, the post office closed in November 1913, and the last train left town in July 1914. The power was shut off in 1916. By 1920, the population had dwindled to just 14. The last resident was a 92-year-old man who died in 1924.
After becoming a ghost town, most of the useful building materials were stripped. Tourism moved in quickly in the middle of the 1920s. The town site has also been used as a set in a handful of films.
Buildings in Rhyolite
While visiting Rhyolite, there are a few crumbling buildings still intact. Most are along Golden Street, which was the main road through town.
Tom Kelly’s Bottle House
The Bottle House is the best preserved structure in Rhyolite. It’s a three-room house built by Australian miner Tom Kelly in February 1906. He used over 50,000 beer and liquor bottles, and when the house was complete, he sold it in a raffle. The Bennett family held the winning ticket out of the 400 sold at US$5 apiece. They lived in the house from 1906 to 1914, and hired Dave Kinney to add a false chimney, porch roof, and gingerbread trim.
The Bottle House was used by Paramount Pictures for the silent film Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924) and The Air Mail (1925). Behind the house seems to be a model of the town in its heyday, constructed by shards of glass, wood, and mud.
School
The first building along Golden Street is the town’s second school. It had three classrooms and a large hallway on the ground floor. Upstairs was one classroom and an auditorium. The roof was covered in galvanized Spanish tile, and there was a copula with a bell. The school opened in January 1909. Unfortunately, by that time, most of the students had moved away. It closed in 1911.
Miners Union Hall
Across the street from the school was the Miners Union Hall. The Bonanza Miners Union #235 was formed during the early days of Rhyolite. By April 1907, it had up to 1,400 members. The dues of US$2 a month paid for the operations of a miners hospital as well as funeral arrangements for miners killed on the job. The union hall burned down in 1909 and was rebuilt with a stone foundation. The building was torn down in the 1960s, and the wooden emblem that hung above the doors is now at the Beatty Museum.
Overbury Building
Further along on the left side of the road is the Overbury Building, which was built by John Overbury, a native of Orange, New Jersey, who came to Nevada in 1902. Construction began in 1906 and it was completed in June 1907 at a cost of between US$45,000 and US$60,000. The three-story building measures 45 x 80 feet and was the biggest stone structure in Rhyolite. It housed the First National Bank of Rhyolite and offices for a stock brokerage firm, a dentist, and an attorney. It had indoor plumbing, electric lights, fireproof shutters, an automatic fire suppression system, and private bathrooms.
Porter Brothers’ Store
Across the street are the ruins of the Porter Brothers’ Store, owned by Hiram and Lyman Porter. After they outgrew their original store that opened on Main Street in 1905, they built this structure on Golden Street in 1906. Construction took four months and cost US$10,000.
The Porter Brothers’ Store was the second biggest employer in Rhyolite after the mines and was very popular for Christmas shopping, with displays rivaling department stores in major cities. It closed in 1910, but Hiram stayed in town as the postmaster until the post office closed on September 15, 1919.
Cook Bank Building
The next building as you continue along Golden Street is the John S. Cook and Co. Bank, which was established by John Cook and his brother in Goldfield, Nevada, in January 1905. That same year, they opened a branch in Rhyolite. Construction on the three-story building started in spring 1907 and it was completed in 1908 for a total of US$90,000.
The building was one of the finest in town, boasting Italian marble stairs, mahogany accents, imported stained-glass windows, steam heating, indoor plumbing, and electric lights. It had the town’s post office in the basement, the bank on the ground floor, and offices on the 2nd and 3rd floors. The bank closed in 1910 and Cook sold off all the fixtures. Today, it’s one of the most photographed structures in Nevada.
Las Vegas and Tonopah Depot
At the end of the road is the depot for the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad, which started serving Rhyolite on December 14, 1906. It was built between September 1907 and June 1908. Two other railroads also provided service. The Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad started around June 1907 followed by the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad in December 1907.
Wes Moreland purchased the depot in 1935 and opened the Rhyolite Ghost Casino in 1937. A bar and casino were on the lower level while a brothel allegedly operated upstairs. By the 1960s, Moreland’s sister, Mrs. Herschel Heisler, converted the depot to a small museum and gift shop that operated until the 1970s. The building has been owned by the Bureau of Land Management since October 2000, and is working to restore it.
Near the depot is an old caboose from a Union Pacific train. It was used as a gas station in the 1930s.
Adobe Dance Hall
Down a side street east of the Porter Brothers’ Store are the ruins of the Adobe Dance Hall, which was completed in 1905. It was at the corner of Amargosa Street and Colorado Avenue in the heart of the red light district. The dance hall provided a bar for miners to dance with “ladies of the night” or watch boxing matches and other sporting events. Four small rooms on the east side of the building were used by women and their clients. The owner was Bob Bynum.
Rhyolite Jail
Further along, you can spot the jail, which was built after January 1907. It’s a reinforced concrete building with a jailer’s quarters, a courtroom, and four 6.5 square-foot steel cells. A walking trail can take you to the building.
Miner’s Cabin
Nearby is the so-called miner’s cabin. It was built with cast-in-place rubble and adobe around 1906. The building may have been used as a brothel or a railroad office. It’s one of the few buildings in Rhyolite in good condition.
Rhyolite Cemetery
As you’re leaving Rhyolite, on a dirt road just off the main road near NV 374 is the old Rhyolite/Bullfrog Cemetery. At the entrance is a memorial plaque dedicated in April 1959 commemorating all who passed through the town and opened Nevada to mining.
There are several graves of people who lived in the town. Names are legible on a few, while many are marked only with a cross or wooden headboard. The more recent graves belong to people who were born or lived in the town and died several years later elsewhere, or others who lived in the area.
Goldwell Open Air Museum
Finally, you can’t visit Rhyolite without stopping by the Goldwell Open Air Museum. A group of Belgian artists, led by Albert Szukalski (1945-2000), created an art installation in the middle of the desert in 1984. The museum is open 24/7 and admission is free (as of February 2025). The visitor center and gift shop is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10am to 4pm.
The permanent collection of the Goldwell Open Air Museum contains a few original works by Szukalski, including his version of The Last Supper, Ghost Rider, and Serving Ghost. All three were created in 1984.
Other works in the permanent collection are Lady Desert: The Venus of Nevada (1992) by Dr. Hugo Heyrman; Tribute to Shorty Harris (1994) by Fred Bervoets; and Icara (1992) by Dre Peeters. The collection grows periodically, and some new pieces have been added since my last visit.
Sit Here!, created by Sofie Siegmann in 2000, was temporarily displayed at the Goldwell Open Air Museum starting in 2007. Other temporary works are displayed from time to time.
