Photo Essay: Bonnie Claire Ghost Town's Inspirational House of Quotes

Since my accommodations during my recent superbloom trip to Death Valley National Park were in Beatty, Nevada—and not inside the park or in one of the surrounding towns in California—my geography gave me the opportunity to explore some of the environs east of and in the eastern end of the park for the first time in a long time.

 

Photo Essay: Nevada's Home of the 'Miracle Metal' That Helped the Allied Forces Win World War II

For as many times as I've visited Las Vegas, I still have a lot to learn about the Las Vegas Valley—and Southern Nevada as a whole. 

That's one of the reasons I like traveling for the annual "Home + History" weekend sponsored by Nevada Preservation Foundation—whose events have taken me to unexpected places on the Strip, just off the Strip, on Fremont Street, and even to nearby Boulder City. 

This year, the one big draw for me was the historic bus tour of Henderson, now Nevada's second-largest city. 

While Boulder City had the Hoover Dam to thank for its founding, Henderson had something completely different: magnesium.

In fact, although Henderson wasn't incorporated until 1953—named after Nevada Senator Charles Belknap Henderson—it began over a decade before that as the "Basic Townsite," home of Basic Magnesium, Inc. (BMI).

And the bus tour I'd driven five and a half hours for, which was co-presented by Nevada Preservation Foundation and Henderson Historical Society, took us through the old BMI plant.

 

This Giant Concrete Arrow Pointed the Way for Pilots Delivering Mail By Air Between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City

I was in Southern Nevada for Thanksgiving to visit dear friends—practically family. So I wanted to spend plenty of time with them, but I also wanted to carve out an opportunity to go on a couple little adventures. 

That sent me in search of one of the many gigantic, concrete arrows that dot the desert in the Battle Born state—well, actually two of them. I had to abort the mission in search of the first one, the one in Mesquite, since I was coming back from The Donkey Museum a little too late to have enough sunlight to navigate the rough dirt road to get to it. 

So, two days later, I made a second try—this time to get to a second arrow, this one in the Moapa Valley community of Logandale, not far off the 15 Freeway. 

 

Photo Essay: Cruising Lake Mead on the Desert Princess to the Hoover Dam

Nevada's Lake Mead has been a source of much fascination for me—from the construction of the Hoover Dam (which formed the lake out of the waters of the Colorado River) to the flooding of nearby towns (like St. Thomas).

But while I'd spent some time around the lake—peering at it from a zipline at Bootleg Canyon, hiking around it through decommissioned railroad tunnels, even looking down at it from the dam itself—I hadn't yet had the chance to explore the lake from the lake itself.

Photo Essay: Christmas Spirit Has Taken Over the Bellagio Conservatory in Vegas

I was feeling pretty grumpy this past week and doing my best to embrace Thanksgiving. I wasn't ready for Christmas yet. 

 

And then I arrived in Vegas, legs stiff from a four-hour drive, already weary from the holiday festivities that had not yet come, and swung by the Bellagio to see what they'd done at the Conservatory this season. 

Photo Essay: The Mirage Disappears from the Las Vegas Strip, Where a Giant Guitar Will Replace the Erupting Volcano

There's only one Vegas hotel I've liked enough to stay at more than once—or, unlike the Riviera, that stuck around long enough for me to stay at more than once.

 

circa 2022

That's The Mirage—which just closed in July 2024 to begin its conversion into the Hard Rock Las Vegas. 

Photo Essay: The Museum Preserving Showgirl History in Post-Jubilee Las Vegas

What is Las Vegas without its showgirls?

 

Well, that's Vegas right now—because since the "Jubilee!" show at Bally's closed in 2016, there's no longer a showgirl show.

Just the girls wearing feathered headpieces standing outside the Flamingo or the Venetian, or on Fremont Street, trying to get cash for photos. 

Well, except the 50-foot ones that were installed on the North Strip section of Las Vegas Boulevard. 

   

Since October 2023, the closest thing the city has had to a good old fashioned showgirl spectacular is Dita Von Teese's DITA LAS VEGAS: A Jubilant Revue in the Jubilee Theater at Bally's (which was rebranded as Horseshoe Las Vegas in December 2022). Unfortunately, that closed this weekend—but the good news is, I made it back to Vegas in time to see a performance of it on its second-to-last weekend.  

 

But this post isn't about Dita—and, as I learned at the Las Vegas Showgirl Museum, neither Dita nor her production qualifies as a showgirl show, even though it used some of the Jubilee sets and original costumes designed by Bob Mackie.

Photo Essay: The Sphere Has Landed in Vegas—And What An Experience It is

Las Vegas may have changed a lot since my first visit in the 1990s—and I may feel nostalgic for a version of Vegas I never actually got to experience—but I still love to visit the place, as ever-changing as it may be, even just to admire its audacity. 

 

The latest addition to the Vegas skyline is the Sphere—the world's largest spherical structure with the world's largest screen, which opened in September 2023 after five years of construction. 

Photo Essay: Chasing Down Elvis in Vegas

It didn't really occur to me when I visited the then-Las Vegas Hilton back in the late 1990s (for Star Trek: The Experience, which ran there 1998 to 2008) that I so close to the legacy left by Elvis Presley at the former International Hotel.

 

Photo Essay: The Bellagio's Italian Garden of Love Brings A Touch of Romance to Spring

The Bellagio Hotel & Casino was added to the Las Vegas Strip in 1998...

 

...built by hotelier Steve Wynn to evoke the Mediterranean area of Lake Como, Italy. 

While the Bellagio may be best known for its fountain show, I'm drawn to its 14,000-square-foot Conservatory, where immersive, botanical experiences are installed for each season.

Photo Essay: The Most Vegas-y Football Stadium Ever Is Now Home to the Raiders (And the 2024 Super Bowl)

Once again, football season has rolled around—and although I took the tour of Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas back in May 2022, I waited until now to post about it.

 

It was purpose-built (on land that's always been a vacant lot, according to HistoricAerials.com) as the National Football League stadium of the Las Vegas Raiders—formerly the Oakland Raiders (1960–1981 and 1995–2019) and, when I was growing up and watching American football with my dad, the LA Raiders (1982–1994). They relocated to Vegas in 2020, although that year they played to an empty stadium because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photo Essay: Paramount Pictures' Star Movie Train & Passenger Car, Revived In Retirement at Nevada State Railroad Museum

If I was going to drive all the way up to Carson City, Nevada all by myself for the Great Western Steam Up, then I was going to ride every train it had to offer while I was there. 

 

And that meant signing up for the special excursion pulled by the Virginia & Truckee Railroad No. 22, Inyo. 

Photo Essay: Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the V&T Railroad at the Great Western Steam Up

I'd been wanting to visit the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, Nevada—but there are just too many train museums to visit.  

Photo Essay: A Real Estate Heir-Turned-Recluse Kept His Lake Tahoe Compound To Himself (And Accidentally Conserved Much of the Shoreline)

On my way from California to farther east in Nevada, I stopped along the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe (technically in the town of Incline Village, NV) to take a tour of a historic estate known as Thunderbird Lodge.  

 

Locals seem to call it "the old Whittell estate"—named after the eccentric millionaire from San Francisco who built it, George Whittell, Jr.

Photo Essay: Where Gentlemen Millionaires Gathered & Gambled During Virginia City's 'Silver Seventies'

On the Saturday of my 4th of July weekend trip to Nevada, I had a couple of hours after getting back from my Fly Geyser tour and before the sun would set on Virginia City and the landmarks along its nationally-recognized historic district. 

 

I'd decided to make my visit to the Comstock Lode former boomtown as touristy as could be—including a stop at the supposedly haunted Washoe Club, where a ghostly woman in a Victorian blue dress reportedly occupies one of its windows on occasion. 

Photo Essay: Spending Two Nights In Gold Hill, A Near-Ghost Town Across the Divide from Virginia City, NV

I first heard of Gold Hill when I was researching a trip to Virginia City, Nevada that I ended up not taking last fall. All the travel guides recommended taking the train from Gold Hill instead of trying to find parking in Virginia City. That piqued my interest.

 Gold Hill train depot, built 1872

Photo Essay: Pedaling the Rails of the Comstock Lode

I was in the Carson City, Nevada area for the first time ever last weekend for the Great Western Steam Up, in celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the completion of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, "Queen of the Short Lines."

It wasn't ever a commercial passenger railway—instead being devoted solely to carrying freight for the mining communities of the first major discovery of silver ore, the Comstock Lode. 

Back then, that part of Nevada—mostly centered around Virginia City—was considered the western part of the Utah territory. 

Naturally, I wanted to experience as much of the V&T as I could while I was in the area.

Although 24 miles of rebuilt tracks are active between Carson City and Virginia City, the operation of those rights of way is somewhat fragmented. There's only one roundtrip train departure from Carson City to Virginia City per day, on Saturdays and Sundays only. 

   

I decided to ride the rails from Carson City's V&T Eastgate depot in a different way: on a railbike. 

Photo Essay: Nevada's Accidental Rainbow Geyser, Near the Burning Man Playa

I'd had a chance to join a group of friends on a nature walk to Fly Geyser back in 2018, the first year it had opened to the public in over two decades.

But on the date of their trip, I was already making up for another trip I'd missed with that same group of friends. 

I feel like I'm always behind on everything. 

Every opportunity taken is a missed opportunity to do something else. 

 

So only four years later, I managed to nab a reservation through Friends of Black Rock High Rock, the non-profit that controls public access to the natural wonder (with an incredibly restrictive photo policy).

Photo Essay: The Only Surviving Home from the Demolished Desert Inn Country Club Estates, Vegas

I'd been waiting since 2019 to return to Nevada Preservation Foundation's annual Home + History tour—and one of my top destinations this year was the nationally-landmarked Morelli House by architect Hugh E. Taylor.  

   

Photo Essay: The Oldest Hotel in Vegas, Golden Gate Hotel & Casino at 1 Fremont Street

I've been feeling a sense of urgency to visit all the Vegas hotels and casinos I can before they get imploded. I've seen too many disappear already—some devastatingly before I ever had the chance to visit. 

I still rack my brain trying to remember what the Strip was like when I first stayed there, at the Stratosphere, when I was too sick with the flu to really explore or appreciate it. That was before I knew everything would go away one day. 

Now I know. And it tortures me.