The story
Rhyolite is one of the easiest major ghost towns in the country to visit and one of the most photographed. It sits just off NV-374, four miles west of Beatty, Nevada, on the way into Death Valley National Park.
Gold was discovered in the Bullfrog Hills in 1904, and Rhyolite grew faster than almost any town in the West. By 1907 it had electric lights, water mains, a stock exchange, an opera house, a three-story bank, and several thousand residents. Then the Panic of 1907 dried up the Eastern capital behind the mines, the ore proved shallower than promised, and the town emptied almost as fast as it filled. The power was shut off in 1916.
Because Rhyolite was built in concrete and stone instead of lumber, it left real ruins. The shell of the Cook Bank building still stands three stories tall, and the Tom Kelly Bottle House — built in 1906 from about 50,000 bottles — has outlasted nearly everything around it.
What remains today
The Cook Bank ruin, the mission-style train depot, the jail, the Bottle House, and the Goldwell Open Air Museum's sculptures at the edge of town.
Questions from the field
- Can you visit Rhyolite for free?
- Yes — Rhyolite sits on public BLM land off NV-374 near Beatty and is open year-round at no charge, including the Goldwell Open Air Museum next door.
- How far is Rhyolite from Death Valley?
- About 10 minutes from the park's Hells Gate entrance and roughly 35 minutes from Furnace Creek — it's the classic add-on to a Death Valley trip.
- What is the Bottle House in Rhyolite?
- A house built in 1906 by saloon owner Tom Kelly from roughly 50,000 beer and medicine bottles — restored in 1925 for a film shoot and now the best-preserved building in town.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Rhyolite — 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 Rhyolite's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Sources consulted
- — USGS GNIS feature 845627
- — Bureau of Land Management — Rhyolite Historic Site
- — Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology — Bullfrog district