The Long Way to Las Vegas - The Nevada Northern Railroad

Tonopah to Ely

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Today we drove to Ely (pronounced “EE-lee”), Nevada and took a train ride on the Nevada Northern Railroad.  We were up around eight, but didn’t get on the road until just before ten as we had a few things to take care of before we left.  It is a short drive to Ely taking US6 out of Tonopah, but we took a more scenic route that took a little longer.

Today's route, I've added Eureka to the map, our lunch stop today.

We left Tonopah on US6 but soon turned off onto Nevada Highway 376 that goes north to US50.  Highway 376 was marked as a scenic route on the map, but although it was an interesting drive, it wasn’t what you might consider particularly scenic.  The road is roughly 100 miles long and travels through a very stark landscape, but it’s not empty as there were quite a few ranches and several small towns along the way.

US6 east of Tonapah.

We turn north onto Nevada 376.

The northern portion of this road is through the Big Smokey Valley between the Toyabe Mountain Range to the west and the Toquima Range to the east.  Even though the scenery wasn’t what you would call spectacular, it was scenic, and we enjoyed our drive through the area.

Highway 376 north.

Highway 376 ended at the junction with US50 (the "Loneliest Road in America"), and we turned right and headed east towards Ely.  We didn’t bring a lunch today, so we stopped in the historic town of Eureka to eat lunch but had a little trouble finding a place to eat.  Eureka seemed to have grown quite a bit since the last time we came through here, but it is still a small town with a population of only 420.  There were four or five restaurants listed as being here but surprisingly, only one of them was open for lunch, a place called the Eureka Depot that appeared to be a coffee place (not a coffee shop but a Starbucks type coffee shop).  They did offer sandwiches, so we gave it a try and were happily surprised to have a very good lunch.

Turning east onto US50.

Entering Eureka

We had our lunch at the Eureka Depot (where the red awnings are).

After lunch it was on to Ely.  Highway 50 goes through a series of basins and ranges, a very common terrain through much of Nevada creating very dramatic scenery.  It became a bit more mountainous as we neared Ely and as we approached the town, we saw a huge area of man-made mountains from the tailings of several copper, gold and silver pit mines.

US50 east to Ely

Tomorrow, we plan on visiting Basin and Range National Monument so the first thing we did when we arrived in Ely was to find the BLM office, but they were of little help.  It seemed that much of the staff had either quit or been laid off in the recent purge of federal employees and those that were left just didn’t know where to find the information we needed.  We did get a name and a number to call at the park headquarters in Caliente at the southern end of the national monument.  She didn’t answer her phone, so it looked like we were out of luck.

From the BLM Office we drove to our hotel and checked in and had about an hour before we had to be at the train station.  Just before it was time to leave, we received a call from the park headquarters, and did get quite a bit of information from the ranger there.  She said there should be maps and other brochures at the BLM office but said because of the upheaval it was possible that no one knew where they were.  After the call it was time to head to the Nevada Northern Station to start our short train trip.

The Nevada Northern Railway was built to haul copper when copper was being mined in the area, but when the mine was shut down in 1978 and the smelter closed in 1983, the Nevada Northern was taken out of service.  In 1986 Kennecott, the mine operator, donated the Nevada Northern along with the railroad yards and shop facilities to the White Pines Historical Railroad Foundation, a nonprofit that operates the railroad today as the Nevada Northern Railroad Museum.

We arrived at the station a little early and had time to go through the museum and found it quite interesting.  After that we boarded the train and got underway.  The train trip lasted a couple of hours and unfortunately, all three of the old steam engines are out of service being repaired, so our engine was one of the diesels.  

The Nevada Northern Railway Depot and Museum.

The train we are riding today.  We spent most of our time out on the open car in front of the coach.

Inside the coach, we didn't spend much time there.

We're on our way.

This is the conductor, and Val struck up a conversation with him and we learned a lot about the mine and the history of the area.

These are some of the mountains of tailings in the area from the mining operations.

More tailings.

I believe these buildings were built just for some tourist thing in the past, they are not authentic.

Heading back to Ely

Although our train trip didn’t travel through very spectacular scenery, we learned a lot of interesting historic information and at the far end of the trip we ended up at the base of the huge mountains of mine tailings.  Val started talking to the conductor and it turns out he used to work at the mine site and told us quite a bit about the mining operation and the history of mining in the area.  It would have been very interesting to tour the mine site, but they had stopped giving tours several years ago.

We got back a little after six and were really glad we had done this, we had a great time plus at this time of the year, there were very few people taking the trip, so it wasn’t crowded at all.

When we got back to the hotel we were both getting hungry, so we went to the hotel next door that had a small casino and a Mexican restaurant.  We had a nice evening gambling a little and enjoying a good dinner.

Tomorrow, we turn south and hope to explore a bit of the Basin and Range National Monument.