Ely - Nevada
Ely lies on highway 50, known as the loneliest road in the US. I only drove part of it, and it’s a strange sensation seeing a sign saying no services for 88 miles. The longest stretch without services is actually on route 6 - more than 150 miles.
I stopped here for a couple of nights staying at the Jailhouse Casino. As with most casino motels, the food was basic and came in large portions - no nouvelle cuisine.
Ely is rightly proud of its railroad yard in which old locomotives and stock are maintained, often in working order. The public are free to wander around at will; I was just told not to fall into a maintenance pit or get run over - be sensible. I’ve never been up close with machines like these.
Beatty and Goldfield are know mainly for their gold mines; Ely for copper. As with all mines, a number of minerals can be extracted, but towns get to be known for the most profitable. Just outside of Ely lies the very little town of Ruth. It grew up to service the local copper mine which became profitable when it became open-cast. It is still in use providing a large proportion of the work for those in Ely. The terraces are cut into the rock as the ore is mined; each terrance is big enough for a truck to carry the ore. The whole ediface overshadows the town.
Across the road from my motel I found a collection of huts collectively known as the Renaissance Village. It is a small outdoor historical museum consisting of a collection of preserved and reconstructed houses from Ely’s early 20th-century mining era. The aim is to show how different immigrant communities lived during the copper mining boom. Each building houses domestic artifacts from each of the communities - Greek, UK, Italian, etc, etc. Absolutely fascinating. I talked with the guy (forget his name) who maintains the buildings more or less single handedly. He showed me the artifacts left by his Italian grandparents. Below is the plaque for the Slavic House. The interior is Italian (his ancestors).
Ely is big enough to have its own newspaper, which I read while having an iced coffee. A local committee meeting pointed out a number of issues that the town had: lack of qualified staff, poor internet, the need to form alliances with experts in universities and other towns, marketing, and so on. Like many such towns, they are surviving, just. I was told that at this time of year, there were many winter activities such as ice fishing on the nearby frozen lakes. But with temperatures into the 90’s - no chance of that. All the events were cancelled, which was a blow to the economy.
My next stop was to be the notorious town of Pioche!