2005 04, Nevada

2005 04 27 Tonopah to Beatty

Today was a very good day.

I left Tonopah at about 8 AM for the Belmont Courthouse, and met my contact there at 9:30. Turns out that she had to drive from Round Mountain, which is a non-trivial 60 mile one way drive. It's in the next valley to the west. This is a lot of effort to open the place up for me to photograph, so I gave her gas money and then something for her trouble. She and her husband split their time between Round Mountain (home of a huge gold mine) and Belmont. Anyway, she opened the place up for me and I spent about 3 hours photographing the interior all over again. It's quite a cool old building, and it is in great shape. It was abandoned as the county courthouse in 1905, so it is amazing that it is standing at all. That should tell you how far out of the way it really is. It's filled with interesting graffiti, all of which is old and none of which is obscene. Much of it is written out in cursive, someone's best 4th grade penmanship. And some of the visitors tagged the walls in the fashion "Mr. and Mrs. Argle Bargle, 1939" - not your typical 2005 graffiti. Someone should take the trouble to methodically photograph it all if and when the place is ever refinished. Although the plaster walls are still so nice looking it would be a real shame to cover them with anything.

I was worried about the weather today, and hoped that it would not be a completely gray day. That would have knocked the light in the courthouse way down and could have made the whole trip pointless. But as it turned out the light was perfect. There was a high thin layer of cloud so the light was a bit diffuse. Almost all of the original glass windows in the courthouse are missing, and have been replaced with a translucent plastic, just to keep the weather and the critters out. That plastic makes for a wonderful diffuse but fairly bright light inside. It's actually much nicer for photography that whatever harsh light might have been coming in directly through open or glass windows.

The session inside the courthouse could not have been better. (I hope the film justifies that statement when I see it.)

Here are a few shots of the courthouse interior.

I had spent some time studying the weather last night and decided to go south this morning. That was a brilliant move, since as I was driving south through the Ralston Valley, away from Belmont, the weather got quite stormy. There was a big line of thunderstorms just to my west, with both snow and rain falling. Quite a bit of lightning too.

The further south I drove the more the sky opened up. From very ominous dark gray to light gray to puffy clouds to nothing but blue skies, in about 80 miles. By the time I was headed south on US95 from TOnopah it was a fine day. There, anyway. behind me I could see all the thunderstorm activity. I think Belmont and the courthouse was hit hard with rain or probably snow an hour or two after I left.

My next stop was in Goldfield, which in addition to being an air traffic control point for everything going in and out of the bay area, it seems, is a not-dead-yet gold mining town. It was a huge boom town, but is barely hanging on now. The city is trying to remake itself as a tourist attraction, and it appears to be working to a certain extent. Still, Goldfield is largely a wreck. Many of the old buildings are barely standing, and there is debris everywhere. It's a remarkable place to walk around. The people of Goldfield are clearly very comfortable with the concept of entropy.. increasing entropy.

The gold fields themselves are to the west of town, and are huge and messy. It doesn't look like there is any mining activity at all in Goldfield now. I drove around the mining area and did some shooting. Here are a few:

Goldfield would be a great place to spend several days shooting. I'd like to get permission to really look at the mining district and all the old structures and equipment. There are enough people around that I would not do this without permission.

Here's proof that at least someone in Goldfield has a sense of humor. Carhenge and Mowerhenge,I suppose. There were other cars around stuck in the sage like this, but there didn't seem to be much order to it. The mowers were in a nice little circle.

Continuing south I turned toward Death Valley on 267, mostly to see if it was open after the washouts last year. It appeared to be open and I went in as far as the Bonnie Claire mine, which I have shot before. A couple:

I thought this would be the end of photography for the day, but about 4 or 5 miles south of the 95-267 intersection there is this extremely cool abandoned gas station off the east side of 95. It's far enough from the road that you don't see it unless you're paying attention. The sun was almost gone by the time I turned around and stopped, but I did shoot some film and get some digital snaps. While I was here the air was getting cooler by the minute, and the wind was really blowing. Lots of pieces of sheet metal and who knows what all else were banging in the wind. This is out on a very long straight stretch of US95, with nothing but sage for miles and miles in all directions. It felt rather apocalyptic.. I have to go back to this place.

So finally, the sun was gone, and I would not be able to do any more shooting even if I wanted to. A good day.