Highway 50
The easiest way to visit Great Basin National Park is to make a day-long side trip from the Great Circle tour of the National Parks of Utah, but we had no intention of missing out on the opportunity to drive Highway 50 across Nevada. The Chamber of Commerce would like you to think of Highway 50 as the route of the old Pony Express Trail or even as part of the Lincoln Highway, the nation's first transcontinental roadway, but, thanks to Life magazine, the highway from Fernley to Ely will always be known as "The Loneliest Road in America."
According to Life magazine, AAA trip advisors actively discourage use of this route and warn people that survival skills are a real necessity. The Nevada Tourism Bureau takes this in good humor and now publishes "The Official Hwy 50 Survival Guide,"and issues certificates to those intrepid souls who successfully complete this dangerous journey. To qualify, you have to submit a copy of the Survival Guide stamped by officials at Fernley, Fallon, Austin, Eureka and Ely. We both received our certificates and here's mine:
Hwy 50 CertificateGreat Basin NP
Great Basin is considered one the lesser-known National Parks but there are three major attractions: the Lehman Caves, Wheeler Peak, and the bristlecone pines. There are bigger caves, taller mountains and older bristlecone pines, but, in each instance there is something special here.
When the cave was discovered (there is only one despite its name), they had to break through a large number of formations in order to even begin exploring. They found a very active cave with an extraordinary number of stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, flowstone, popcorn, and over 300 rare shield formations. And over the years, many of the shield formations have developed their own stalactites and now look like amazing underground versions of jellyfish.
Jellyfish Shield FormationsWheeler Peak isn't even the tallest mountain in Nevada, but it's the only one in the state that has a glacier. Because of the long snow season, the rocks were partially covered with snow when we saw them, but the Ranger geologist I talked with told me this is actually a rock glacier - a mass of rock and dirt held together by ice. Even when the snow melts away, the ice remains frozen and the mass moves just as any glacier would. I had thought this mass was what was left after the glacier receded, but I was told that would actually be a moraine. Also, a patch of snow that never melts is called an ice field. -- I really should have paid more attention in those Earth Science classes.
Wheeler PeakThe bristlecone pine situation is even more confusing. The 'Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest' in the White Mountains near Lone Pine, California is home to 'Methuselah', the world's oldest living thing at 4700 years, but in 1964 a researcher was authorized by the Forest Service to cut down a particular bristlecone pine 250 miles to the east, near the tree line of Wheeler Peak (which was not yet a National Park). This tree became known as 'Prometheus' when it was discovered that it had been close to 5000 years old.
So, the oldest thing to have ever lived was cut down and no one visiting the National Park can see it. Of course, no one really gets to see 'Methuselah' either. We made the trip to the White Mountains and discovered that the Forest Service keeps the tree's exact location in the grove secret from the public to protect it from vandalism -- as if the Forest Service wasn't the bigger threat.
Tour of Nevada Continues
We've taken US 95 to Death Valley and US 50 to Ely and decided to explore something different. We traveled the Great Basin Highway that connects Las Vegas to Ely and we even checked out part of the Extraterrestrial Highway of Area 51 fame. We didn't see anything unusual there, which is disappointing since they say you're not really a Nevadan until you've seen a UFO.
We did see a variety of wildlife on this trip. On Highway 50, we saw a group of wild horses and jack-rabbit road-kill way out of proportion to the amount of traffic on the road, and, as we left Ely for Tonopah, we saw a couple of deer grazing in a field and then a small herd of pronghorns.
But that was all the wildlife we were going to see. US 6 from Ely to Tonapah is an amazing drive across central Nevada and we quickly descended onto a stretch of open land that was actually primeval. It isn't just that there aren't any services along the road, there's nothing but the highway itself to indicate that any human has ever been there. There were alkali valleys, hills of volcanic cinder, and the cooled lava from ancient eruptions. And there was nothing else: no ghost towns, no rest stops, no cell service and we traveled for hours across this lunar landscape before seeing another vehicle. This really was a lonely highway.
The comedy movie The Great Race is loosely based on the 1908 New York to Paris auto race won by the American team in the famous Thomas Flyer (on display at the Auto Museum in Reno) but, once you have driven this route you realize there's nothing very funny, even today, about a cracked transmission when you're 50 miles from Tonapah on this road.
From Tonopah to Bishop, CA, we began to have a little traffic, but nothing of consequence and we soon had a major change in scenery as our route took us toward the eastern side of Kings Canyon National Park. As we approached California, we had great views of Border Peak, Nevada's tallest mountain, then, in Bishop, we joined the crowd for a late lunch at Erick Schat's Bakkery before continuing our journey home.
To see a few more photos, go to
Great Basin NP
Great Basin NP
