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| Sunday, July 30, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal COLUMN: TRIP OF THE WEEK: Margo Bartlett Pesek Buildings made from bottles can still be found in Nevada
When raw mining camps sprang up in remote locations in the West, residents sought shelter wherever they could find it. Often far from established travel routes, the mining towns found themselves short of necessities. Before freight lines caught up to the boomtowns, construction materials were in such short supply that Westerners thought up some bizarre construction techniques to meet the demand. They lived in everything from dugouts in the ground to houses constructed of discarded bottles.
Saloons numbered among the first commercial structures erected in most mining camps. Freight lines often carried supplies of liquor for these establishments before other essentials arrived. Before long, dumps surrounded the boomtowns, full of beer, wine and liquor bottles. In some towns the castoff glass replaced brick or stone as building materials for part or all of many styles of buildings. Set in concrete or adobe mortar, the glass proved to be strong and durable. Best of all, it was available free of exorbitant freight charges. That had already been paid by the men who emptied the bottles in the saloons. This inventive solution to a housing crisis of yesteryear would bring praise to builders today for their recycling efforts.
A meager handful of bottle houses survive today in several old Nevada towns and a few other places. Before anyone realized their uniqueness, most were dismantled or destroyed. One house that met such a fate in Tonopah may be seen today only in photographs. The sturdy, square little dwelling with a hip roof stood for decades on a Tonopah side street. It is shown currently in a historical photographic exhibit at the Nevada State Museum & Historical Society, 700 Twin Lakes Drive, courtesy of the Central Nevada Museum in Tonopah. Fortunately, preservation efforts are under way for other bottle houses.
An early preservation attempt by Walter Knott of Knott's Berry Farm in Southern California assembled a haphazard collection of buildings from abandoned mining camps all over the West. Knott used some of the buildings at the berry farm and stored others at the site of Calico, an authentic ghost town near Barstow, Calif., then owned by the Knott family. Calico later was deeded to San Bernardino County for a regional park.
A fine bottle house stands among the structures seen today in Calico, but historians cannot trace its origins. Visitors to Calico enjoy looking at the unusual structure with its large star of contrasting bottles at one gabled end. The Calico bottle house may be original to the town or it may have been imported from some other ghost town, perhaps even Nevada. Only Knott knew its story.
In contrast, the story of the most famous bottle house in Nevada is well-known. A Rhyolite resident built the bottle house near Beatty in 1906 when Rhyolite was at the center of a thriving Nevada gold mining district. An estimated 20,000 to 50,000 bottles held together by adobe were used in the construction of the single-story, L-shaped structure with its railed wooden porch and gingerbread trim. The bottle house was reconstructed in the 1920s when it appeared in a silent film called "Wanderers in the Wasteland," a Zane Grey tale.
The Rhyolite bottle house remained a residence despite its fame, inhabited by Tommy Thompson, a friendly character who reportedly was a musician in some of the dozens of saloons in Rhyolite during its boom years. The bottle house became such an attraction that one room was used as a small souvenir shop for many years. In 1990, Rhyolite devotees became alarmed when a section of one wall collapsed, perhaps because of renewed activity at a nearby gold mine and mill site. A group called Friends of Rhyolite formed to save the bottle house and other remnants of the old town. The group oversaw the wall repair and formulated a plan for continued maintenance and protection of old Rhyolite's historic remains.
As Nevadans recognize the importance of historic preservation, even small communities guard their heritage. Tiny Round Mountain in Central Nevada boasts a cellar made of bottles long ago. The original town now lies surrounded and dwarfed by mountains of rock waste as huge earth-moving equipment processes old tailings. The modern mining facility employes a large workforce. Most live in a settlement in the valley removed from the old town by several miles, but still called by the historic name. A road skirts the tailings to reach the old town site.
Goldfield claims the largest number of bottle houses still standing. As motorists on U.S. Highway 95 cruise through town, they notice two bottle houses right along the highway. The first is opposite the Esmeralda County Courthouse next door to the charming Victorian home built by fight promoter Tex Rickard in the early 1900s when Goldfield boomed. This little residence built of bottles now houses a business, its sturdy walls still in good condition. Restoration continues on a second bottle house at the opposite end of town. Unoccupied for the past few years, the house had begun to deteriorate. Walls are being repaired with bottles and concrete mortar like the original construction.
On a business street near the courthouse sits Goldfield's third building constructed of bottles. This building housing a bar is Goldfield's sole surviving commercial structure built of bottles and mortar. Where siding has been stripped away from a side wall, the underlying rows of bottles placed side by side are visible. Until this spring, no one knew there was a fourth bottle house in Goldfield. During cleanup in preparation for Goldfield's auction of county-held parcels in June, the ruins of this old dwelling were accidentally discovered under flash-flood debris, perhaps dating from a devastating flood in 1913. The ruins of this bottle house have been covered over to protect them until possible future restoration.
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MARGO BARTLETT PESEK
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