The Loneliest Road in America (US 50)

US Route 50 Across Central Nevada, Dubbed 'The Loneliest Road In America' By Life Magazine In 1986 · Austin, Nevada

US Route 50 crosses the middle of Nevada from the Carson Valley to the Utah line, and the stretch between Fallon and Ely - roughly 250 to 290 miles depending on where you start counting - is the part Life magazine called the loneliest road in America in 1986, quoting an official who said drivers would need survival skills. Nevada turned the insult into a brand, and the name stuck. The road runs across the Basin and Range: long straight valleys of sagebrush, then a climb over a pass of 6,000 to 7,500 feet, then another valley, over and over, with only three real towns - Austin, Eureka and Ely - and a handful of roadhouses between them. It follows much of the line of the 1860-61 Pony Express and the early Lincoln Highway, and along the way are Pony Express station ruins, petroglyph sites, a singing sand dune, silver-boom towns with 1870s churches, an opera house and a stone tower, and some of the darkest night skies in the lower 48. It is not a destination in itself; it is a crossing that rewards people who slow down, fill the tank in every town and stop at the small things.

US Route 50 between Fallon and Ely, Austin, Nevada, 89310, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the highway itself is open 24 hours every day and is closed only briefly by storms, crashes or roadworks. What keeps hours are the things along it: fuel stations and cafes in Austin and Eureka often open from roughly 7 or 8 am to early evening and some close one or two days a week or out of season; roadhouses and small museums keep limited hours. The traps that ruin a day are arriving in Austin or Eureka after the only fuel pump has closed, leaving the last 100 miles for after dark among open-range cattle, crossing a pass in a winter storm without checking the road report, and forgetting the one-hour jump to Mountain time at the Utah line.

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