The story
Metropolis was a real-estate dream before it was a town: the Pacific Reclamation Company platted a model farming city for 7,500 people on the Elko County sagebrush in 1911, built a $100,000 brick hotel, a grand three-story school, an amusement hall, and a railroad spur, and sold Eastern and Mormon families on irrigated wheat in the desert.
The water was never really theirs. Downstream ranchers on the Humboldt sued, and in 1913 the courts stripped the project of most of its irrigation rights. What followed was Old Testament: drought years, then plagues of jackrabbits eating the dry-farmed wheat to the dirt — settlers held rabbit drives by the thousands — then Mormon crickets, then the railroad pulling its spur in 1925.
Families held on far longer than the company did, but the school graduated its last class in 1947. The school's grand entrance arch still stands alone in the fields — the most photogenic ruin of a failed dream in Nevada.
What remains today
The Lincoln School's monumental arch and rubble, the hotel's foundations, irrigation works, the cemetery, and interpretive signs among working ranchland.
Questions from the field
- Why did Metropolis, Nevada fail?
- A court ruling in 1913 stripped the colony of most of its planned irrigation water, and dry-farming years that followed were destroyed by drought and repeated jackrabbit invasions. The railroad left in 1925 and the school closed in 1947.
- What is the arch at Metropolis?
- It's the surviving entrance of the three-story Lincoln School, built in 1914 for a city that never materialized — now the site's signature ruin.
- How do I get to Metropolis?
- From Wells, NV, take county roads about 14 miles northwest; the route is graded and signed, and dry-weather passable for ordinary cars.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Metropolis — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Metropolis's permanent record.
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Sources consulted
- — USGS GNIS feature 858093
- — Pacific Reclamation Company records / Elko County history
- — Nevada State Water Rights litigation records, 1913