2004 08, Nevada

2004 08 21 Belmont, Big Weather

Today I got started with big plans to go several different places.  I was going to start with the 45 minute drive to the populated ghost town of Belmont, then head back the other way and go back to Gold Point, and finally take another walk around Goldfield on the way back to Tonopah.  I didn't get any further than Belmont.  This is one of those mining towns that flared briefly and then flamed out.  But there are still a dozen or so people living here full time, and more in the summer.  It's just in a stunning location.  It is at about 7400 feet, so it is relatively cool even in summer, and the winters are cold but sunny.  One of the "locals" I talked to said they get between 1 and 4 feet of snow most years.

This is the smelter which is about 1/2 mile outside the remaining core of Belmont.  It appears to have been about 200 feet by 100 feet, a pretty large multi-level stone building.  The remains of many smaller structures are all around on the hillside.  Off past the stack is the Monitor Valley.  I wonder what they burned to keep a smelter this large going.

Looking back towards Belmont, which is over the sage at the far right.

This is looking up the smelter stack.  Sort of a cool shot.

Back away from the smelter a bit, looking out over the Monitor Valley to the north.  Clouds are building again.  The stack is about 70 or 80 feet tall.  This little building looks like the remains of a residence.

Here is the Belmont Courthouse, which is now held by the county parks and rec, and is being slowly restored.  I want to go back tomorrow and get in for some interior photos.  Looking in the windows is interesting.   Someone in Belmont has the keys and said I could get in - they do tours.

I guess you can't really read this.  Look at the Belmont link above for all the gory details.

This is interesting.  This looks like it was the "jail wing" of the courthouse.  The missing wall suggests that something is missing ..

which I would guess is this.  A modular welded steel set of jail cells.  I will ask tomorrow to see if I am right that this was inside the courthouse and was removed.

Here is the interior of that unit.  There is one very tiny unit that looks like it was reserved for the crankiest prisoners, and the other door opens on an "L" room with four bunks.  That room looks like it is about 70 square feet at most.

The following are some random shots of the falling down parts of Belmont.  A lot of this was really interesting and I shot a lot of film along here.

The road in.  That is the Ralston Valley to the south.  Tonopah is about 40 miles south and 10 miles east.  Clouds coming ..

More collapsed Belmont.

The clouds came in just as I was about out of gas shooting film.  I was sitting around trying to decide what to do at about 5:00.  I went north just past town into the Monitor Valley to snap some weather.  I took some panoramic of all this.  It is quite impressive.  I love the way you can see the weather happen.

After that was this.

I did not mention yet that one of the local couples runs a small inn in Belmont.  It's a very nice place, quite old, and they live here full time.  Tonight they had a music and food event, and I was not sure if I wanted to hang around for this or not.  Since the weather had gone all threatening and the light was basically gone by 6 I decided to stay for some Cowboy Grub (TM).  It was pretty good.  (It is interesting to read on that link that they say they have cell phone service here.  My cell phone was dead from the time I was 5 miles from Tonopah.  Someone I talked to said that the "Belmont phone booth" is a stretch of the road in that is about 200 yards long and about a mile out of Belmont.  That's the place you go if you want cell service.  It was also interesting to realize that they had no power in town other than generators and solar.  I saw a lot of solar panels, but I imagine most of the power comes from battery backed up generators.)

I do have to trade in this baseball hat and Teva's though.  I need a very large droopy soup strainer mustache, a cowboy hat that looks like it has been in the rain for a month and then run over a few times, a western shirt that has either never been washed, or has been washed 3000 times so you can barely tell what color it once was, and some boots.  In this next shot the guy in the flat top white hat (looking into the camera) is the cook.  He was fun to talk to.

More "local" color.  Many of these people live in the area on the various ranches.  I talked to one couple that retired from California state government and moved to the booming metropolis of Manhattan NV, about 15 miles south and a little west.  I went through there shooting last summer.  It's another "occupied" ghost town.  Check out the black hat on the guy serving himself.  Almost anyplace else hats like that would be an affectation.

More "local color".  I talked quite a bit with the guy in the foreground at the picnic table.  Curtis from Dayton NV, near Carson City.  He and his wife take off almost every weekend to go places in the state.

And on the way back to Tonopah it rained hard for about 10 miles.  I got the Jeep nice and clean.  The speck on the horizon in the shot below are car headlights about 10 miles behind  me.  There was a lot of lightning and I briefly wondered if it was a good idea to be out driving on a dead flat plain.  Since there really wasn't any way to get any lower to the ground than I was I just kept going.

Tomorrow I am going back to Belmont to see the second smelter and photograph in the courthouse (I hope) and the rest of the town ruins.  And probably some more cool weather.