Pioche
Silver Boom Hillside Town, Once Said To Be One Of The Roughest In The West, With The 'Million Dollar Courthouse' And An Aerial Tramway · Pioche, Nevada
Pioche is a small mining town of roughly 1,000 people clinging to a steep hillside at about 6,000 feet in eastern Nevada, and the seat of Lincoln County. Silver was found here in the 1860s, and the camp, named after the San Francisco financier Francois Pioche, boomed in the early 1870s, when it earned a reputation as one of the most lawless towns in the West; the stories of dozens of violent deaths before the first natural one are local legend and should be taken as such. Its best-known relic is the Million Dollar Courthouse, a modest brick building of 1871 whose cost, through debt and refinancing, is said to have swollen toward a million dollars before it was finally paid off decades later, long after the county had stopped using it. Above Main Street hang the towers and ore buckets of an old aerial tramway, and Boot Hill holds a row of graves known as Murderers' Row. Pioche is half restored and half faded, with a museum, a few old buildings and very limited services, and it pairs naturally with Cathedral Gorge State Park, about 15 minutes south.
Main Street, Pioche, Nevada, 89043, United States
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the streets, Boot Hill and the tramway can be seen at any time, while the Million Dollar Courthouse and the Lincoln County Museum are volunteer-run and usually open only on some days in the warmer months, roughly late spring to early fall, with limited or no winter hours. Thompson's Opera House opens mainly for events. Cafes and bars keep short, irregular hours. The traps that ruin a day are driving hours to find the courthouse closed for the season, arriving at a Pioche cafe on its closed day, running low on fuel on US 93 after dark, and forgetting that Utah is an hour ahead when driving on. Confirm current times before relying on them.