Pahrump, Nevada – Week Two

We are parked at Charleston Peak RV Resort with a wonderful view of…you guessed it….Charleston Peak.  Unfortunately the clouds have rarely lifted enough for us to see it and when they do lift we can see that the peak is covered with snow.  It looks nice from a distance.

In spite of being in the desert at the tail end of the warm season, it has been chilly for most of our stay and we’ve been treated to some fairly colorful thunderstorms and hard-driving rain.  The weather has served to keep us indoors much of the time and is depriving me of an opportunity to enjoy water aerobics in the resort’s nice pool.

So, except for exploring a bit more of Pahrump, our only foray into the desert was a day trip to the living ghost town of Beatty with our friends, the Parrs.  Beatty, population roughly 1500,  bills itself as The Gateway to Death Valley and given its desert location is quite verdant, thanks to an underground river called the Amargosa.  Beatty was originally a supply center for mining operations in the area and there are still gold mining operations nearby, along with a volcanic cinder mine and a “medical-grade” mud mine.  I wish we’d check out that little factoid a little more closely.  How does mud get to be medical-grade? 

We checked out the Beatty Museum, a collection of photos and other artifacts from “the good old days”.  By reading an old newspaper story we learned that at one point in time, every building in Beatty would set off a Geiger counter.  You see, Beatty is just “over the hill” from Yucca Mountain…and Area 51.  And then there’s the suspenseful saga of the railroad wars between Clark, the copper king, and Smith, the borax king.  Read about the Kings' feud here.

Beatty is also home to Death Valley Nut & Candy Company, a large shop featuring just about any kind of candy you can think of, except the pink mints Betty Jo was hoping to find.  And a glance through a list of town businesses found The Shady Lady Ranch (brothel) right there between Bank of America (banking) and Stagecoach Hotel & Casino (casinos). 

It’s only a few miles from the ghost town of Rhyolite so off we went off to check that out.  On the way, we saw a trio of wild burros grazing not far from the road.  They abound in this area, their ancestors having been abandoned by the miners who brought them here.  We’d all been to Rhyolite in previous years and somehow managed to miss the Goldwell Open Air Museum, although how anyone could miss a large pink naked lady in the middle of nowhere is anybody’s guess.  In addition to its rather spooky location, this open air (and therefore free) museum boasts several spooky sculptures.  Apparently there is a museum attendant who shows up on weekends to explain the art work.  We were sorry to have missed him/her because most of the artwork needed a whole lot of explaining.   Overcast skies did nothing to improve the ghostliness of these statues.

We had  planned a day trip to Las Vegas but that didn’t quite pan out so we explored a bit more of Pahrump.  It is quite apparent that no “city planner” was involved here.  The valley is enormous and there are bits and pieces of civilization scattered everywhere.  If there is a “downtown” we haven’t found it yet but there are strip malls miles away from each other, not clustered along the state highway as you might expect.  Pahrump was obviously all set for a boom that never quite happened and many of the shops are standing empty along streets that have yet to be paved. 

Pahrump will be home for another few days and if the weather improves we may yet get in a visit to Badwater in Death Valley, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 282 feet below sea level.