
A Night and a Day in Tonopah, Nevada - Thevet
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-night-and-a-day-in-tonopah-nevada
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sverige
Having driven through this area a few times, and also on Highways 93 and 50
("The Loneliest Road in America"), I have to say that my favorite parts of
Nevada are far from Vegas and Reno. The emptiness is quite wonderful.

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blackguardx
I've always wanted to pull off the highway in the middle of Nevada and just go
wandering into the wilderness. Sadly, I've always been on my way somewhere and
felt that I couldn't spare any time. Someday I would like to have a more
spontaneous approach to life.

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prawn
Also I imagine that police would see your car and investigate, (with best
intentions) interrupting any solitude. Perhaps if you left a note saying that
you were going for a walk, had ample water, weren't out of your mind, and the
time/date you intended to return.

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sverige
There are no police out there, though. At least, I've never seen any.

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prawn
I was speaking mostly of general highway stops. Pulled over on a road in
Nevada or one of the neighbouring states at 10-11pm so my wife could
breastfeed our daughter. Car pulled up behind us and we had an initial nervous
reaction before it turned out to be a cop just making sure we weren't having
car trouble.

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jimmywanger
I've been through the area several times.

My favourite place is Great Basin National Park
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Basin_National_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Basin_National_Park)

It's the EDIT: (one of the) least visited national park. And if you're going
during the new moon, there's a glorious view of the milky way because of the
lack of light pollution (one of the least light polluted places in the United
States)

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sizzzzlerz
Not quite the least visited but close. If you only consider the continental
parks, North Cascades and Chaco NHP have fewer visitors. Several of the
Alaskan parks also have fewer visitors but they are much harder to get to.
Still, its a beautiful park to visit. Sort of a Yosemite without the people.

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jimmywanger
Appreciate the correction, I thought I read that somewhere but I guess I was
wrong.

The North Cascades are beautiful too. God's country up there.

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dredmorbius
I would caution those planning travel through Nevada that predatory policing
and exceptonally aggressive law enforcement appears par for the course.

Despite the appeal of open desert, and several past travels through the
region, I've had exceptionally poor experiences, particularly on US Highway
50, and Austin, NV, in particular.

Avoid.

Being threatened with violence and bench warrants for traffic stops, and the
reasonable precaution of _not_ stopping in the middle of desert rather than a
mile down the road in a well-lit, inhabited area, is beyond the pale.

The LEO's stated concerns during our encounter for _his_ safety whilst being
observed by those he is sworn to protect and serve suggests a considerable
failure of governance.

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mikestew
I've had two encounters with cops in NV on the motorcycle (can't say that I've
driven a car in NV), one county and one state. County was outside Ely. I'd
swear I was outside the town limits and twisted it back up to 70mph. Nope, not
out of town yet, and the speed limit's still 40mph. We had a nice conversation
about the local area while we waited on the radio license check. Check came
back clean, and I was sent off with a "long stretch of lonely road ahead, try
to keep the speed reasonable."

Second encounter was right around Tonopah. Coming to a hill crest, Valentine
One radar detector goes nuts, and a state trooper pops over the hill coming
the other way as I am doing about 90mph (don't recall the limit, but it ain't
anywhere near 90). He hits the lights. Fuck. Then, oddly, the lights go out.
As I roll off the throttle in preparation for a nice Q&A on why he might have
pulled me over, I check the mirrors and the cop's Tahoe is still rolling the
other way. Oookay, then, hint taken.

So I'll see your anecdata and raise you one. I don't know your story, but at a
minimum I well and truly deserved a ticket for encounter #2, and didn't even
have to stop. Doing 30 over for #1 was a mistake, but I was still guilty as
hell and traveling at "go to jail for reckless" speed. And I _never_ obey the
limit in NV when I'm outside of town.

I've touched motorcycle wheels in every continental U. S. state, and NV is the
least of my worries for cops. YMMV, and it obviously does.

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dredmorbius
Mine was specific to the Austin area. I've met good and bad cops. This was
definitely a bad cop.

Every opportunity he had to make things better, he made them worse.

(I stopped digging early and fast, I'm not stupid.)

Much of the situation was the context and interaction of the stop itself. This
kid wasn't doing himself any favours.

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GCA10
Glad to see they included the Goldfield Hotel, just down the road a ways. It
gets bought every 15 years or so by a different out-of-town property magnate,
who announces that it will be fully restored.

The Goldfield's new owner never makes much headway, but the hotel does get
opened up briefly for visitors. It is a very freaky experience to walk its
corridors. I did so in 2004, and wrote this piece about it:
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110238920487392930](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110238920487392930)

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prawn
I'm from Australia but have visited the US several times. The country has so
many great stretches of grim Americana - areas that you are surprised support
life and enterprise now or in the past.

In California, there's the stretch from Palm Springs down past Bombay Beach to
Salvation Mountain (both interesting to see). Between Joshua Tree NP and
Mojave NP is the Needles Highway, Wonder Valley, areas with messages written
in colourful rocks on the side of the road.

Arizona has some interesting roads too with remnants of road-side stalls.

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Animats
When I saw Tonopah, I assumed the article was going to be about weapons
testing. There are various ranges around Tonopah for testing dangerous things,
up to and including nuclear weapons.

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adsteel_
I spent a day and a night in Tonopah, NV, in the clown motel, but not by
choice. It was a story-packed 24 hours. I never thought I'd see someone
writing about being a tourist there though. Tonopah's economic collapse is
written starkly across a landscape of rusted out industrial equipment, as well
as the flat affects of the locals. It's the kind of town you nervously wait to
leave while you're filling up your gas.

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degenerate

      >> Tonopah (pronounced TOE-nuh-PAH) is located halfway between and .
    

If anyone else is missing the locations on their page too... interestingly, my
ad blocker removes the anchor links labeled "Las Vegas" and "Reno" because the
link destinations funnel through a doubleclick server.

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epimetheus
It was blocked on mine too, thanks for posting a reason, I had assumed it was
just bad editing. I have ABP but also have a "safe" hosts file[0] that blocks
a lot of stuff like that.

[0]-[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

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tankenmate
When I saw Tonopah the first words in my head were Dallas Alice.

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icodestuff
How is one supposed to watch the videos? A VR headset?

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jimmywanger
With a non-mobile browser.

You can pan with wasd control keys.

