Photo Essay: Rhyolite's Ghost Town Ghosts (Updated)

[Last updated 3/13/26 5:12 PM PT—Some editorial fixes for accuracy added.]

I'd been to the ghost town of Rhyolite once before, but somehow I missed the outdoor sculpture garden art museum that borders its ruins.

It turns out there are even more ghosts living in near Rhyolite than the prospectors and miners who rushed there for gold and fled just as quickly.



One rides a bicycle...



...while the others are frozen in their reenactment of The Last Supper.



That is, until the sun sets behind them...



...glowing like a giant ember in a fiery pit of clouds.



After that...who knows?



Their shrouds appear empty...



- big enough for me to fit inside of one -



...but I do not intrude.



I merely scramble to document their groupings...



...before I lose the necessary light of day...



...and before the unforgiving, unrelenting Mojave Desert consumes or destroys them.

Ghost Rider (1984, Charles Albert Szukalski)
The Last Supper (1984, Charles Albert Szukalski)
Goldwell Open Air Museum
Rhyolite Beatty, NV

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