A memorial to schemers and dreamers, Rhyolite should be cherished
RHYOLITE - An icy wind sings through the empty eyes of the John S. Cook Bank building on the last Sunday of the year.
Squint a little and imagine the three-story structure as it once was, with its stained-glass windows trimmed in Honduran mahogany and its front stairs adorned in Italian marble. That was back in 1907 when Rhyolite, suddenly, was the fourth-largest town in Nevada.
Was it more than a century ago, or just yesterday, that the Cook bank appeared to embody the solid foundation and limitless prospects of the Nevada desert's latest, greatest boomtown?
The name Rhyolite was once on the lips of dreamers and schemers throughout the nation. Railroad men rushed to lay track to its front door four miles from Beatty. Horse-drawn stages and automobiles made the journey from Goldfield to the north and Las Vegas to the east. The Bullfrog mining district appeared to be the Silver State's next big bonanza, and in Nevada, appearances have always been enough to draw the promoters, whiskey spillers and gambling men.
Gold had been discovered a few years earlier, and by the first week of May 1905, Rhyolite had its own newspaper. As recounted by historian Robert D. McCracken, the Rhyolite Herald shouted the big news:
"Rhyolite spread canvas faster than any town on the Nevada desert. Men scrambled to buy or lease the most favorable locations, regardless of price. The grocer, the baker, the booze dispenser almost with one accord, hung out their signs and shingles. Within a few days every line of business and profession was represented and a full-fledged community had been established.
" The rainbow chasers were crowded into canvas lodging houses partitioned with cheesecloth or burlap - proof against neither sight nor sound."
Once a shining symbol of Rhyolite's prospects, these days the Cook building is just a facade held together with mortar and no small amount of irony. I come here often to walk Golden Street amid the ruins of this iconic old ghost.
In its prime, Rhyolite produced far more embossed stock certificates than mill-grade ore. It draws no prospectors, but it does attract a steady trickle of photo-snapping tourists.
By 1930, Rhyolite's boom was long past. The winter wind sliced through the mostly empty town. Death Valley prospector Shorty Harris helped start the commotion in the Bullfrog district and had watched Rhyolite go from desert silence to roaring camp and back again.
Harris sang the mining town's praises but lamented that the place had been done in by too many high-collared con artists and not enough working men.
"Stock speculation - that's what killed Rhyolite!" he said. "The promoters got impatient. They figured that money could be made faster by getting gold from the pockets of suckers than by digging it out of the hills.
"If the right people ever get hold of Rhyolite, they'll make a killing; but they'll have to be the real hard-rock miners, and not the kind that do their work only on paper."
Harris was right, of course, and I know of a certain boomtown 120 miles east of Rhyolite whose residents might benefit from his sage advice. It's as applicable today as it was years ago - and as likely to be ignored.
Rhyolite should be cherished and preserved - if only to enrich our spirits and help keep us humble.
On the last Sunday of the year, a winter storm blows across the edge of the Great Basin. There's snow in the clouds. The greasewood is garrulous with the lost voices of the hard-rock miners and hard-nosed hustlers who once brought this place to life with strong backs and stock speculation.
This is no time for cynicism, they say. A new year is here. There's gold in those dark and distant hills.
John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Smith
