Just got back last night from our Highway 50 adventure across the vast expanse of empty space that comprises the middle of Nevada on the so called "Loneliest Highway in America" a trip we started years ago, but got distracted with another destination and never finished. This time we did it. Flew into Las Vegas as always, won a few hundred at blackjack, wasted $20 or so on the slots, rented a car, and headed up the 93 with an overnight stay in the mountain top mining village of Pioche, then up to the town of Ely where the 50 began for us. Never know where to pick up the thread when we get back from a trip. Once tried the chronological approach but it was exhausting so I am back to more or less random entries as the spirit moves me. Somewhere on Highway 93 traveling north to Ely...
is a once thriving railroad center/mining support/hot springs hot spot aptly named Caliente that is now mostly abandoned, imploding, and beyond even thinking about some meaningful way of repurposing itself, something you can say about the thousands of towns across America once defined by their relationship to the railroad which had either been ripped up years ago, or are no longer needed to provide material railway services with the advent of the diesel. The train tracks in Caliente are still there, but the train no longer bothers to stop at this town of a few hundred people. We stopped for dinner at the Knotty Pine, one of two places in town to eat and I had a pretty good tuna sandwich.
Recently read a blog posting by someone who had passed through Caliente who said there were only 2 building in town of any interest, the train station, built in 1923 in the mission style as a hotel/restaurant/supply terminal for the active railroad industry which once defined this town...
and Carl's Burger's and sandwich shop, an establishment that seems full of the hope and promise that define the American spirit, but was already closed when I took this picture 6 or 7 years ago when I last passed through Caliente, still shooting film.
Carl's is still kind of there, but the broken windows are now boarded up and the signs were falling down. Would have taken a picture, but the sun was behind the building and not worth the effort.
Other than that there is the old movie house on Clover Street parallel to the railroad tracks that kind of puts the exclamation point on the dismal state of affairs facing Caliente and a few thousand American towns just like it.
Pablo
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