In July, 1986 the then popular Life Magazine featured an article about America’s Loneliest Highway, Route 50 from the Reno, Carson City area southeast diagonally across the state through Fallon, Austin, Eureka, Ely to Great Basin National Park and Baker and into Utah.
Actually Highway 50 runs cross country from Sacramento to Maryland including some beautiful small towns and rural areas of Colorado. But Life, in promoting it as the loneliest highway, even suggested a survival guide. No phones, radio stations, no services for hundreds of miles. Bring a SAT phone they said, plenty of food and water in case you break down.
While it was intended as a pejorative, the city fathers, the chambers of commerce, adopted it as a come on, a tourist slogan. Road signs were put up. Passports were printed encouraging travelers to get stamps along the route, then mail in their stamped passport and get a certificate proclaiming that the driver had “survived.”
While I love people, love to socialize, I also love solitude. So I recently drove it. Not only is it quiet, lonely, it’s historical. It follows the old Pony Express route from Sacramento through Nevada. It follows the mining towns of the Old West, and the railroad ties put in to transport whatever the mines yielded. After visiting Great Basin National Park and the artsy Baker, I spent the night in Ely. There is a walking tour of the town with beautiful murals, street art, depicting the history of the town.
Eureka, a town where you can literally, as you enter town, see the other end of the town. Bars, saloons where you expect to see gun men face off in the middle of the street. A historic, completely restored opera house highlights the town.
Austin, a “wide” spot in the road (the entire three hundred plus miles are two lane all the way) where you get your stamp at the gas station. You want to stop there, not only for the stamp, but because the highway goes hundreds of miles between any services.
Fallon, home of Naval Air Station Fallon, where they train Top Gun pilots. You might even recognize some of the countryside from the movie Top Gun.
After Fallon the Route 50 adventure ended when I swung south and headed down 395, another two lane highway, to Hawthorne and Tonopah and into Death Valley, California.
I don’t think most people realize the route is there, or the beauty that Nevada offers. Check it out online. If you decide to do it, relax, take your time, meet the locals, but yes, remember to top off your gas tank, have plenty of water with you, maybe some snacks, because if you have a problem, with absolutely no phone service, and long stretches between towns, miles and miles without seeing another vehicle, it may be a LONG time before anybody comes along to give you a hand.
