Photos of Rhyolite, Nevada, Death Valley’s Best Ghost Town

Rhyolite was a boom town thanks to a successful gold mine. A series of uncontrollable financial disasters led the town to ruin though the mine wasn’t depleted until the late ’90s. Many of the original buildings were moved to new towns. Others were stripped of their precious construction materials, especially the wood. Wood was rare and very expensive to get in the the desert.

Textures of Decay

Paul became fascinated with the textures of decay found around the town as soon as he spied an old wood-sided Union Pacific boxcar. Here are his photos.

Boxcars used to be wooden.

Ceiling above the bottle house porch.

Even the sky was awesome.

Much of the town was fenced in.

Old boards.

Pile of galvanized steel scraps.

Pile of old steel cans.

Stone wall, missing its top.

The town’s “bottle house” — a house made out of empty beer bottles.

Windows to the Past

Lisa loved the windows. Their eerie emptiness was more than a little haunting. Here are her photos.

It’s now so desolate, it’s hard to imagine 10,000 people living here.

One room cabin with a sweet view.

One of the bank buildings.

The vault.

From one bank to another.

They had gold on the brain.

The sign is new, the building is old.

The bottle house’s windows were made of regular glass.

The school house.