Travelogue

Lady Desert: The Venus of NevadaThe next morning, we headed east on 120, a beautiful road that brought us into Nevada, and then south to the town of Beatty, near the eastern entrance to Death Valley.

However, we couldn’t just breeze through Beatty without a stop at one of our favorite outdoor sculpture museums – the Goldwell Open Air Museum in Rhyolite. This place is literally in the middle of nowhere.

The museum, which is open to the public 24 hours a day 7 days a week, has seven monumental outdoor sculptures that are colossal not only in their scale, but in their dramatic setting amongst mountains and the Mojave Desert. It was precisely this stark setting that attracted a group of Belgian artists in the 1980s to choose this location to create their art.

Where's Waldo?My two favorites sculptures were by Albert Szukalski, and they both involve an unusual technique he developed in which a live model is draped in plaster-soaked burlap and has to remain still until the plaster dries enough to stand on its own. I can’t even begin to imagine how uncomfortable this must have been for the models. It gets really, really hot here.

Szukalski’s largest work is entitled “The Last Supper,” and it consists of 12 white ghostly shapes arranged as in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the same name. The shapes have no faces or bodies – just drapes hanging on an invisible form.

My second favorite was aptly called “Ghost Rider.” As in Szukalski’s other works, a ghostly draped figure – minus the body inside – stood beside an actual real bicycle, as if it was getting ready to go for a ride.

Ghost Rider of RhyoliteI also took the time this visit to walk the entire maze, which according to Strava was a tenth of a mile.

For anyone passing through this area, the Goldwell Open Air Museum is truly worth a visit.

Just up the road from Goldwell is the Rhyolite Ghost Town. Coming from the East Coast, ghost towns are still a bit of a novelty for us, and we can’t resist a poke around. Each of them has its own not-so unique story – someone discovers gold, thousands descend on area, town springs up, mines dry up, people leave, buildings crumble, tourists come.

At its height, Rhyolite had a population of 5,000, hotels, stores, a school for 250 children, an opera house, a railroad depot, an ice plant, an ice cream parlor, two electric plants, foundries and machine shops, and a hospital. Rhyolite even had a red light district which drew women from as far away as San Francisco.

The old Cook Bank of RhyoliteToday, there is not much left of this once lively and boisterous town. Not nearly as much to explore as there is at Bodie State Historic Park near Bridgeport, California, where we really got a feel for what life must have been like in one of these boom towns.

All that remains intact in Rhyolite is a beautiful, old railway depot and the Bottle House, a home made from 50,000 beer and liquor bottles. The most photographed image in Rhyolite is of the ruins of the old three-story Cook Bank. In fact, it is the most photographed ruin in the entire state of Nevada.

As always, Rhyolite had been a very interesting stop, but it was time to head into Death Valley and figure out where we would be camping for the night.

Description

The small town of Rhyolite is located just off Highway 394, near the eastern edge of Death Valley National Park. It is only 35 miles from the Furnace Creek Visitor Center.

For such a tiny, remote town, there are two very interesting sights, which make it a very worthwhile side trip from Death Valley:

Goldwell Open Air Museum

Ghostly PaletteThe Goldwell Open Air Museum is located just off State Highway 374, near the Rhyolite Ghost Town. The museum, which is open to the pubic 24 hours a day 7 days a week, has seven monumental outdoor sculptures that are colossal not only in their scale, but in their dramatic setting amongst mountains and the Mojave Desert.

It was this dramatic setting that led a group of prominent Belgian artists in the 1980s to choose this location as a place to create art freely. The museum was organized in 2000 after the death of Albert Szukalski, the Belgian artist who created the site’s first sculptures. His unusual technique involved molding shapes by draping plaster-soaked burlap over live models until the plaster dried enough to stand on its own. His largest work, “The Last Supper,” consists of 12 large white ghostly shapes arranged as in da Vinci’s painting of the same name. Another one of is pieces entitled “Ghost Rider” is a plaster figure getting ready to mount a bicycle.

Today artists continue to create in this spectacular and challenging landscape as part of an art residency and workshop program.
An on-site visitor center with exhibits is open from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Monday through Saturday. In summer it often closes by 2:00 pm because of the heat. Admission is free.

Rhyolite Ghost Town

Rhyolite Ghost TownLike many western towns, Rhyolite sprang up from nowhere when in 1904 Shorty Harris and E. L. Cross discovered quartz on a nearby hill. Soon thousands of gold-seekers flocked to the area, settling in a sheltered desert basin which was named Rhyolite because of the silica-rich volcanic rock in the area. By 1908, the population grew close to 5,000, and the town had hotels, stores, a school for 250 children, an opera house, a railroad depot, an ice plant, two electric plants, foundries and machine shops, and a hospital. Rhyolite even had a red light district which drew women from as far away as San Francisco. One enterprising miner named Tom T. Kelly built a Bottle House, made from 50,000 beer and liquor bottles. That house is one of the buildings that still remains today.

As with so many other boom towns, Rhyolite declined as quickly as it rose. The financial panic of 1907 made it more difficult to raise capital, and soon mines began to close and the banks to fail. By 1910, production had significantly slowed and there were only 611 residents left in town. In 1911, the mine and mill were closed down and by 1916 the light and power in the town were turned off.

After 1920, Rhyolite became a tourist attraction and a setting for motion pictures. Today visitors can see several remnants of the town’s glory days: the railway depot, the Bottle House, and the ruins of the three-story Cook Bank and an old jail.