Tonopah Nevada, one more time

Here are a few photos from my weekend in Tonopah.


Proud home of the Tonopah Muckers


World weary lama
downtown Saturday afternoon "petting zoo"



Main Street, downtown Tonopah

"The Last Picture Show"
Th film was supposed to be about a desperate little town
in Texas but many of the scenes were filmed in Tonopah,
including the street scene used on the official poster for the film,
hanging in Tonopah's Convention Center.



One block off of Main

Thrift shop



Outhouse



Miner's house
located just north of the outhouse, also one block of Main St.


View of Mizpah Hotel on Main St.
as seen from cabin next door.



Polaroid of a guy drinking a beer
found in this shack. Yes, I left the photo there.
It's waiting for you.



Back side of heaven



Wild hot springs a few miles from town.
The water was too hot in the middle of the day
to do anything but soak our feet.


Local newspaper clippings 1907 - 1911
Tonopah museum

An incredibly different style of journalism.

1909


1911


1907



Old Tonopah graveyard

revisited again


Baby William's doll
Something moved the doll since my last visit in the spring



Unknown baby
the wind has rubbed the name away

tonopah nevada the last picture show graveyard miner's cabin old west

Optical illusion or pearl of light?

Most of Tonopah is below ground.

Outhouse behind Mizpah Hotel.
Note the TP still on the roll.

On the surface, streets and buildings

Rm. 501
Outdoor spotlights shining into our room
made sleep the first night nearly impossible.

rest precariously on twisting, overlapping,

Keeping out the light.

intersecting mazes of miner's tunnels

"Pearl" or glitch?
That white dot isn't in the other
other photos I took of the curtain.

miles and miles long.

Lady in Red's "pearl" or optical illusion?

They are the real Tonopah.

Tonapah good-bye

We just got back from another lovely weekend convention in Tonopah. I didn't visit the man disappearing from the photo stuck in the wall of the stone miner's shack.




I didn't poke around the Mizpah this time or check to see if the lights are still on at Bobbie's abandoned Buckaroo Bar out on Hwy. 6

"Back Funa and Two Babies"

but here are a few photos from my favorite graveyard down by the Clown. I took them last spring. Don't worry. Nothing has changed. Looks like this will by my last trip to Tonopah for a while.




I'll miss the place, the people, its ghosts but all good things must pass. Luckily, all bad things pass too. Even naked Sarah Palin will eventually blow away.




Anyway, it's late. We're leaving for Guatemala on Wednesday and I'm not ready but then I won't be ready until a week after I walked out the door.

Last Dance in Tonopah

It's that time in Tonopah again.

I assume the small chairs in the lobby are for
the ghost children who are said to haunt the hotel.

But this time it's the last time. At least for now. I'm really going to miss this place. It's been a long run.

Main Street at night.

But the Mizpah is (finally) open so, for this last and final trip, we've got a room there. It's a good farewell. I've been photographing the place for years while it was closed and shuttered. I never thought I'd actually get inside, much less stay there.

Open at last.

We're on the 5th floor, right next to the room of the Lady in Red. As the story goes, she was strangled just outside our door. That was in the 1920s and ever since people have reported that she still walks the hallways and occasionally leaves a pearl from her broken necklace on a pillow. No disrespect, but I'll let you know if anything strange happens.

Tonopah Public Library

Tonopah is half ghost town located along highway 395 in Nevada, but as long as it has a gas station it will never die. I happen to really like Tonopah and am here for the weekend at a conference. Lucky me. It's got a fantastic museum, a wonderful old graveyard and creepy, decrepit buildings such as the abandoned Mizpah Hotel which is perpetually for sale; plus plenty of boarded-up miner shacks, not much bigger than the cots they once sheltered, to make even the dirt alleys ripe or rotten (according to your perspective) with history. Tonopah has had several boom and bust cycles but is just too mean to die. The surrounding playa is dotted with sun-bleached pyramid shaped piles of tailings left by crazed miners ransacking the desert for gold. It sprawls between several wind carved peaks but even they have been shaved down to nubs and there's a defunct mine pit right in the center of town. But I digress.

I just checked my website and found that none of the photos are loading! Fuck! It may be that the library's computers are too slow or their settings are super restricted, something along those lines, but other sites load just fine. If you have a second, I'd really appreciate it if you'd check a couple of links for me and let me know if you see the images. If you go to the Nevada Journal (and can see anything) check out the photo of Bill Bailey, Sheik of the Desert. I took that in the Tonopah Museum. From the looks of things, Bill Bailey was high up in the social hierarchy here perhaps only a tier or two down from Madame Taxscine, Tonopah's favorite Madame fondly referred to as the Little Desert Mother. She's in the Nevada Journal too. Here's those links: Ashabot - Nevada Journal
It's undoubtedly my fault but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I check my site from other computers whenever I get the chance and usually things are okay. But this is bad. I don't know crap about building a website. I just bang around in FrontPage and hope I get things right. If anyone has any tips, I'd really appreciate hearing from you. You can leave a comment here or email me directly at ... ashaATashabotDOTcom ... I'll pick it up when I can. I'd prefer hearing from you in email so I have a better chance of picking your brain, but then maybe you don't want your brain picked.

In happier news from the road, John called this morning just minutes before we left. He got home about 10 last night!!! I was ecstatic. I wish they'd all come home. NOW.