The Long Way to Las Vegas - Ghost Towns and Matt's Grave

Fallon to Tonopah

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

For anyone who's familiar with the song “Willin’” you’ll see that by the end of the day we’ll have made it from “Tehachapi to Tonopah”, so we are looking forward to that.  As a side note, we have also driven from “Tucson to Tucumcari” but not on this trip.

An overview of our road trip so far.  Tonight we'll be in Tonopah.

We were up early this morning as Val had checked her phone and saw we had an email from our travel agent, and she had already been busy booking a cruise we wanted to take that was available for the first time today.  Once we got that taken care of, we were wide awake, so we got dressed and got an early start today.

From Fallon, we are traveling southeast to Tonopah and stopping at several ghost towns along the way.  Leaving Fallon we drove east on US50, the so called “loneliest road in America”, I say so called because we have been on plenty of less traveled roads, but that said, we do enjoy traveling across Nevada on US50.

The two red markers are the ghost towns we'll be looking for today.

Most of Nevada is made up of areas of basin and range that is part of a large area called Basin and Range Province covering much of the Southwestern United State and Northwestern Mexico.  As you drive US50 (or almost any road in Nevada) you are constantly crossing a mountain range and then dropping down into a valley (the basin).  The sizes of both the basins and the ranges vary quite a bit and it makes for an interesting and scenic drive. 

Basin and Range Province

We didn’t spend too much time on US50 as after an hour we reached the town of Middlegate and turned south onto Nevada Highway 361.  Middlegate consists of a few very rundown-looking buildings, but it did have a restaurant that didn’t look very promising, but you never know.  From 361 we found Quartz Mountain Road, a dirt track heading east out into the desert that would supposedly take us to the Broken Hills Ghost Town and mine. 

US50 east of Fallon

 

Nevada Highway 361 south of US50

We're heading east on Quartz Mountain Road looking for the Broken Hill ghost town.

Here is what we found on Quartz Mountain Road.

The most interesting thing we found was a grave with an iron fence around it at the top of a hill on a spur off the main road.  It was the grave of Matt Costello who lived from 1866 to 1926.  We were really curious about why this grave was out here in this isolated area.  Val did some searching later and found that he was a prospector who had spent 30 years in the area and lived a subsistence life, barely having enough money to get by.  It turns out that just before he died, he sold some claims of his for $1500 which doesn’t sound like much, but in today’s money that’s about $27,000 so he must have felt like he was rich.  Unfortunately, several days later some friends found him dead sitting in a chair in his cabin, he never enjoyed the fruits of his long years of labor.  His friend buried him near his cabin.  The cabin is long gone, but his gravesite is still there.  Here is another link to the story of Matt Costello.

We foundd the grave of Matt Costello out in the middle of nowhere.

The road was in good shape and didn’t require 4-wheel drive, but it was very narrow, but luckily the whole time we were out there we didn’t see one other car on the road.  We spent quite a bit time of driving around, but we never did find the Broken Hills ghost town, but we did find several old mine sites, and at one of them we were surprised to see an elderly man sitting in front of a beat-up camper.  It was a little spooky to suddenly find someone out in the middle of nowhere, but he was probably surprised seeing us out there too.

We spotted an old mine and were surprised to see someone else there as we drove up to it.

 

 

We looked around a little and then headed back to Quartz Mountain Road.

We didn't find the Broken Hills ghost town, but we did find another old mine.

We gave up on finding the Broken Hills ghost town and started back to 361.

Back to 361.

We gave up our search for Broken Hills and returned to 361 and drove on further south.  Our next stop was Berlin Ichthyosaur State Park that was home to the pretty well-preserved mining town of Berlin.  It is also the site of an excavation where the fossilized bones of an Ichthyosaur were found.  This park is a place you have to plan to visit as it is really out in the middle of nowhere, a long way from any main highway.

The route to Berlin and Ione.

We turned off of 361 onto Nevada 844 that led to Berlin Ichthyosaur State Park.

 

The first part of the road was paved ...

but it eventually turned into a well maintained dirt road.

Berlin Ichthyosaur State Park ahead.

After getting oriented, the first thing we did was drive through the town to the fossil site where there was a display and information on the Ichthyosaur.  An Ichthyosaur is a prehistoric reptile that looks like a fish.  Evidently, they were very common and their fossilized skeletons have been found all over the world.  There is a very nice building over one of the excavation sites where you can find out all about the Ichthyosaur and see the actual spots where the bones were found.  It was very interesting and well worth the visit.

This is one of the dig sites where the fossils were found.

The Ichthyosaur

The weather, though mostly sunny, was still quite cool in the low forties, so for us that was too cold to sit outside and eat our lunch so we ended up eating in the car in the museum parking lot.  After lunch we drove back into Berlin and explored the buildings.  That was also quite interesting, especially the mill building where the hard rock was crushed into powder and the gold and silver extracted with mercury, very dangerous and unhealthy by today’s standards, but normal for those times.  The mine was started in 1897, and the town grew rapidly, but as the gold and silver dwindled, the mine was shut down and the town abandoned in 1911.

This is the mill where the ore was crushed and turned into powder to allow the gold and silver to be extracted.

This is the inside of the mill.  I can't imagine what it must have been like working in here with the loud noise and dust from the ore being crushed and processed.

The ore was delivered to the mill by ore cars.  Those are the remnants above the mill

The mine is situated in the foothills of a mountain range.  The photo was taken from the mill looking out across the basin to the next range.  The road is the way we came in.

These ares some of the other buildings in Berlin.

We had one more ghost town to visit before we headed on to Tonopah, our home for the night.  The town of Ione was only seven miles from Berlin, but driving dirt roads, even the good ones, are slow going so we spent about twenty minutes getting there.

This is the road west back to Highway 361 ...

but first we took this road north to the town of Ione.

Ione was actually inhabited, and despite the number of old and dilapidated buildings, the town has a population of around 40.  It really was out in the middle of nowhere and the town looked kind of down and out, but it was quite interesting and situated in a beautiful area.

The road to Ione

We enter Ione, surprisingly the road was paved through the town.

After driving through the town we drove a little further, and then turned around and headed back.

After Ione, we started the drive back to Highway 361.

It was about a 20-mile drive back to 361, but the road from the state park was mostly paved so it didn’t take too long.  We followed 361 until we reached US95 that took us into Tonopah.

We're back to 361.

South on 361.

We reach US95.  We made a left turn and headed for Tonopah.

A long, lonely stretch on 95 to Tonopah.

 It had been a long, but very interesting day, and we didn’t get too Tonopah until after five.  We haven’t been to Tonopah in quite a few years and were surprised to find that it had grown quite a bit.

Tomorrow, we head east to Ely where we have a train ride schedule on the Northeast Nevada Railway.