Loneliest Road In America, NV

[Martin Hash]

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Driving across Nevada is something few people have ever done and the ones who do seem to live in their motorhomes out in the middle of the desolation, far from everyone except the motorhomes parked a dozen feet to either side. There’s no grocery stores, nor gas stations, and the federal land the road runs through is fenced off. According to the signs, we crossed & recrossed the old 1860 Pony Express route, and occasionally there’s a sign to an archaeological site or mountain bike trail, but mostly it’s just sage brush & tumbleweeds. I lived in Nevada as a child so I’m familiar with tumbleweeds but my wife, Gwynne, was surprised when she hit one on the freeway and it got stuck in the grill. It takes hours to drive through the scrubland, through places with “River” & “basin” in their names, and there are signs of water: smooth crusts of minerals covering large swaths of flat land. Where ever there are signs of human’s disturbing the crust, the wind blows huge clouds of dust so thick it looks like smoke. Over the foothills are distorted cloud formations that look like they’re dropping rain, and there was even be the occasional smattering of drops on the windshield.



We didn’t pass another car in hours but saw a flurry of flashing lights ahead: it turned out to be a police escort for a “wide load.” Gwynne pulled over but one of the police officers told her that the road would be filled between the white lines and that she’d have to pull into the ditch. Soon a caravan of three trucks and escort vehicles passed. The first had the widest load I’d ever seen: the frame & chassis of one of those gigantic dump trucks that haul ore in strip mines, soon followed by an even bigger load: the dump bed; the third truck had the axles and tires. When they’d passed, we were discussing how rare it must be to see something like that when from behind another “wide load,” this time one of those giant 6-wheel farm tractors, passed us like we were standing still!



We finally stopped at the only place for gas, Champs, in Austin Nevada. It claimed the road we were on, NV HWY 50, was the “Loneliest Road in America.” The pumps were set up for motorhomes & trailers, and it was full, so many in fact that Google Maps showed a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. There were little rock shops & antique cafes nearby but they were all closed even though there were “open” signs out front.

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