In July of 1986, Life magazine dubbed Nevada Highway 50 “The Loneliest Road in America” and the title stuck! The article claimed there were “no points of interest” along the route and warned readers not to risk traveling it unless they were confident of their “survival skills”.
During our travels through the western states, we’d not seen a highway that was more open or less travelled, but “no points of interest” and needing “survival skills” was overstated. The American Indians, the Pony Express, and miners travelled this road with a lot less technology than we had, so it’s not that bad.
In addition, there’s a little-known fact about Nevada that makes its loneliest road, quietly beautiful. What’s the little -known fact? Nevada has the most mountain ranges of any state in the U.S. They have more than 300 named ranges, all running north-south and more than 40 peaks that exceed 10,000 feet in elevation.
Nevada has the most mountain ranges of any state in the U.S. They have more than 300 named ranges…
If you’re one of those people who thinks there’s something about an open road the bellows freedom, Highway 50 is your kind of road.
We started on Highway 50 in Fallon Nevada. Fallon is small – a Walmart, a Sonic, a few casinos, and a hospital. It also has a county museum but we didn’t spend any time in the town. Just past Fallon, the road stretches out like a cat on a sunny day. Ahead, nothing but black asphalt and the promise of reaching mountains in the distance. Along the sides of the road is Labou Flat, a dry lake, sprinkling the roadside in white.
In Middlegate, just one roadhouse stands. It has served as a restaurant, bar, hotel and refueling station since the Pony Express.
Continuing, Highway 50 goes over the Desatoya Mountains before getting to Austin NV.
Our boondocking location for the night was about a ¼ mile off of Highway 50 on Highway 722.
We woke up to a dusting of snow! Taking the “back route” to Austin from our boondocking spot we continued on Nevada Route 722, and negotiated hairpin turns, steep grades, and free-range cattle as the “shortcut” crossed over the Toiyabe Range before dropping into Austin and rejoining Highway 50.
Austin was founded by Pony Express riders who discovered sliver here and mining boomed in 1862 with a population of 10,000. Today about 300 residents live in Austin. It’s a huge reminder that small town America is slipping away (or maybe already has).
About 20 miles east of Austin NV lies the Hickison Petroglyph Recreation Area. We made a quick stop to stretch our legs and take the self-guided walking tour.
Snacks? Check. Music? Check. Driver? Uh-oh. With a long straight road ahead and zero traffic, Doug used the opportunity to teach the dog to steer.
The next town we rolled through, Eureka, bills itself as the “Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America”. Similar to Austin, mining was a big part of its history.
Great Basin National Park with its sky-scraping peaks, 5000-year-old trees, and 13,000 ft Wheeler Peak had a few fall colors so we left the “Loneliest Road”, camped within the park and enjoyed some hiking up into the flanks of the surrounding 9, 10 and 11,000 ft peaks that populate this spectacular, but less visited, national park.
From Great Basin National Park, we took the Ely Highway 21 to the southeast towards southern Utah and our next destinations; Kanab, Grand Canyon’s North Rim (post here), and Sedona (post here), but along the way we sampled one more remote boondocking spot – this time at Corral Canyon Bureau of Land Management off of Ely Highway 21 just after crossing the Utah border.
Highway 21 heading southeast into Utah marked the transition from our “lonely road” travels as the road begins to wind through pancake-stacked rocks that shoot up from the desert and then past deep fissures and Bryce like red-orange spires as we traveled east of Cedar City and up and towards the Cedar Breaks National Monument of Utah. Making for one of our longer travel days, we pushed even further south toward Kanab UT, finally boondocking on the edge of an overlook that from inside the RV gave the appearance of floating within the canyon walls. This was a pretty area to which we would love to return. Here in this busy spot amongst the rocks and canyons that engulfed us, we were no longer the only boondockers for miles and the loneliest road was now a faint but serene memory.
