Rhyolite Ghost Town

Gold Rush Ghost Town On Bureau Of Land Management Land, Boomed 1905 1911; Beside The Goldwell Open Air Museum · Beatty, Nevada

Rhyolite is the ruin of a gold-rush town in the Bullfrog Hills of southern Nevada, about 4 to 5 miles west of Beatty on the road into Death Valley. After prospectors found gold nearby in 1904, the town was laid out in 1905 and boomed almost overnight, with stone and concrete banks, a school, an opera house, three railroads and a population often put at several thousand. The financial panic of 1907 and the thin ore that followed emptied it just as fast; the main mine closed in 1911 and within a few years Rhyolite was all but deserted. What survives on Bureau of Land Management land is a scatter of shells: the three-storey front of the Cook Bank building, the fenced bottle house, the old railway depot, the school walls, the jail and the cemetery. Beside it, the Goldwell Open Air Museum adds ghostly white plaster figures and other large outdoor sculptures. Entry is free, it is open around the clock, and there are no services at all, so come with water and fuel from Beatty and treat the crumbling walls with care.

Rhyolite Road off NV 374, Beatty, Nevada, 89003, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the ruins and the Goldwell Open Air Museum stand on open land and can be visited 24 hours a day, every day, with no gate or fee, but there is no lighting and no staff after dark. The small Goldwell visitor centre opens on some days only, often in the cooler season; check. Beatty businesses keep their own hours, and some cafes close on certain weekdays. The traps that ruin a visit are arriving at midday in summer, coming without water or fuel, and trying Titus Canyon when it is closed. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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