6 Nevada Towns Nevadans Are Surprised Anyone Still Lives In
A driver crossing Nevada on U.S. Route 50, the highway Life magazine nicknamed “the loneliest road in America” back in 1986, passes a boarded gas station and a hand-painted population sign nobody has repainted in years.
Many Nevadans live nowhere near it.
More than 88% of Nevada’s 3.35 million residents live in just two counties, Clark and Washoe.
These are the Nevada towns Nevadans are surprised anyone still lives in.
Goldfield
The town of Goldfield carries an official population of 288 people, according to Nevada’s Department of Taxation.
That’s a steep drop from the gold rush peak of nearly 20,000 people in 1906, when Goldfield was one of Nevada’s largest towns.
Not anymore.
Crumbling brick storefronts still line Main Street, and the Goldfield Hotel has sat closed since World War II.
None of that stopped Centerra Gold from moving ahead on its Goldfield Project, a gold mining development the company expects to bring into production by the end of 2028.
The Rule That Keeps Goldfield on the Map
Goldfield doesn’t need very many residents to count as a living Nevada town in the government’s eyes.
The U.S. Census Bureau dropped every minimum population requirement for counting a “populated place” after the 2000 census.
The bureau still watches any place with fewer than 10 housing units, and it can ask for extra proof before it will recognize a place at all.
The only automatic disqualifier is zero population and zero housing units at the same time.
That’s how a town of 288, like Goldfield, keeps showing up on official maps and reports while looking, to a passerby, like it should have closed decades ago.
Rachel
Rachel is home to about 100 people across its entire valley, according to Lincoln County’s government, and that still isn’t enough to support a post office.
Union Carbide’s tungsten mine on nearby Tempiute Mountain once employed more than 100 workers who brought their families along.
The company closed the mine around 1988.
Half the valley packed up within a few years.
Nobody came back.
Nobody ever rebuilt the empty mobile home pads they left scattered across the valley.
Nevada officially named the highway running past Rachel, State Route 375, the Extraterrestrial Highway, for its closeness to the Nellis Air Force Range next door.
More than 2 million people pledged online to “storm” the base in September 2019, and only around 75 showed up near Rachel when the day came.
The Little A’Le’Inn still opens every morning, pouring coffee for UFO hunters and highway crews under one roof.
Gerlach
Gerlach has a year-round population of just 130 people, according to Washoe County’s government.
A gypsum plant shutdown in 2011 wiped out 92 jobs in one stroke and helped push the town’s population down more than a third within a decade.
Many Americans who’ve heard of Gerlach know it only as Burning Man’s gateway.
A temporary city rises on the nearby Black Rock Desert playa each summer, just past Gerlach’s edge, then vanishes again within days.
The Burning Man Project now owns about half of Gerlach’s commercial property, and the festival supplies roughly a quarter of the year’s sales at what’s left of the town’s storefronts.
Almost none of that ownership or income stays in Gerlach once the playa empties out.
The handful of year-round residents are the surprising part, not the summer crowd.
Bruno’s Country Club still pours drinks and serves dinner every night the rest of the year, long after the last dust-covered attendee drives home.
Gabbs
Nevada’s Department of Taxation puts Gabbs’ population at 282 people today.
That’s down from a peak near 800 people in 1960, back when Basic Magnesium Inc. ran Gabbs as a company town built during World War II.
Gabbs lost its status as an incorporated city in 2001.
A 2011 report from the Las Vegas Review-Journal found three of every four Gabbs residents were already over 60, and that year’s graduating class held just four students.
Longtime residents have said for years that losing the local post office would be the first sign the town isn’t coming back.
Martin Marietta still runs the magnesite mine in Gabbs today, the only one of its kind still operating anywhere in the country.
Unionville
Unionville is down to fewer than 30 people today.
Silver drew as many as 1,500 residents to Buena Vista Canyon during the boom years of the 1860s, a peak Unionville never matched again.
Nevada’s state historical marker program confirms Unionville served as Humboldt County’s seat of government until Winnemucca took that title in 1873.
The silver ore itself ran out by the late 1870s, and the mining industry that built Unionville never came back.
The same marker credits the town with a calmer history than many mining camps of its era, with fewer of the violent flare-ups that hit similar boomtowns.
Mark Twain arrived in 1862 hoping to strike it rich as a silver prospector.
He never did.
A cabin tied to his stay is still standing today, though it’s been falling apart for years.
Psst! How much do you know about Nevada’s history and geography? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Battle Born Trivia
Answer these questions on Nevada history and geography. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Nevada joined the Union in the middle of the Civil War. What year did that happen?
Luning
Luning shows up again and again on Highway 95 ghost-town road trip guides, right alongside places that have been empty for a century.
It isn't one.
Nevada's Department of Taxation puts Luning's population at about 88 people today.
Towns like Luning split what's left of the state with fourteen other counties.
The saloon is boarded up, the general store and its gas pump went dark with it, and the one-room schoolhouse hasn't held a class in years.
One thing never closed: Luning's post office still sells stamps and sorts mail the same as it always has.
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A shard of old bottle glass at Rhyolite looks like litter to many hikers passing through.
Federal law calls it evidence of Nevada's mining past instead, and pocketing the wrong souvenir can turn a day trip into a felony case.
