The demise of Empire Nevada

[MarkBC]

Another interesting Gerlach feature: Guru Way -- that dirt road that parallels the main road (to the Black Rock), just north of town, basically a linear outdoor gallery for what I call "weird sh!t" -- weird art -- lining the road for a couple/few hundred yards, as I remember it. Maybe inspired by Burning Man, but maybe of local inspiration.
I think it's very cool, and I spent quite a while taking photos on my first discovery. I'd post a few, but they're slides and I'd have to find them before I could scan them.

 

[chnlisle]

There are many western (and other) towns like Gerlach that are endangered species. It seems to me that some of these places could have at least marginal success if magazines like Overland Journal did a little promoting of the visual and adventure riches found in them.

The new issue of OJ has an editorial with a bit of self promoting that takes place in the South Pacific. There are Photo articles on Lesotho, Antarctica and Iceland. This is a magazine that's published in one of the most scenic corners of the U.S. My old photography teacher once said that taking a picture or something that everyone knows is gorgeous (Taj Mahal, slot canyons)doesn't make you a great photographeer. OJ's's pages are filled with ads of stuff made elsewhere and slick pictures of the stuff enduring on foreign soil.

OK I do get it. Niche Market! If anyone gets it I do I sell All Terrain Campers but didn't Sunset Magazine start in a niche market? The West? That was in 1898. My mom started subcribing to Sunset in 1939 and still does. I started my subscription in 1971. It still gets delivered every month unlike Town & Country and Yachting World. And, as is The dream of every red blooded American entrepreneur, Sunset was acquired by Time Warner for a kazillion dollars. Seems like a pretty good plan to me. And I still go to western places I see in Sunset.

There I go again. I just can't help myself sometimes.

 

[Lighthawk]

I think it's very cool, and I spent quite a while taking photos on my first discovery. I'd post a few, but they're slides and I'd have to find them before I could scan them.

Yeah, that's a project. Every winter when business gets slow I try to work through a box or two of slides.
Climbing in the 80's
It takes a lot of time. But, hey! You're retired!

 

[MarkBC]

Yeah, that's a project. Every winter when business gets slow I try to work through a box or two of slides.
Climbing in the 80's
It takes a lot of time. But, hey! You're retired!

Yeah, you're right! I have several binders full of slides-in-sleeves beginning 30 years ago. It would be fun to go through them, slapping sleeves on the lightbox and reminiscing through the loupe... I haven't looked at most of them in decades.
It's possible that my early Black Rock slides were from my "sloppy" period...when slides went from a projector carousel to a stack on a table to a paper bag

-- yes -- sad, shocking even, but true.

. Not gone...but probably covered in 20 years of dust.
About 10 years ago I got an e-mail from someone at a book publisher who saw a photo on my website that they wanted to use for a book cover. Of course, they'd need the original to scan themselves...

After days of searching I found the slide in a random pile under a stack of magazines -- covered in dust/grime. Nevertheless, they were able to use it!

 

[Dughlas Stiubhart]

After days of searching I found the slide in a random pile under a stack of magazines -- covered in dust/grime. Nevertheless, they were able to use it!

View attachment 12242


Big Bend NP, eh? Nice pic. See, you never know what gems you've got in all those piles!

 

[Dughlas Stiubhart]

Yeah, that's a project. Every winter when business gets slow I try to work through a box or two of slides.
Climbing in the 80's
It takes a lot of time. But, hey! You're retired!


You've got some nice photos out there, Lighthawk!

 

[clikrf8]

When we go out to shoot, we go to the iconic places sometimes but most times not. At iconic locations you can hope for stormy weather and wonderful clouds and lighting by going off season to enhance what could be just another point and shoot shot. But, we do like to go to off the map places and when we get our FWC we will be able to this more often. In an issue of Outdoor Photography, there was an article about a photographer who hikes/kayaks/boulders to off the path places that are every bit as beautiful as Zion's Escalante River or the golden aspens in the Grand Tetons. You just need to get out there. We live on such a beautiful planet.

The Black Rock area sounds intriguing. We may get there someday. When we went to Panaca/Pioche last fall, we discovered that Nevada is not a flat desert wasteland but a beautiful state with its own grandeur. And, it has my most favorite state park ever: Valley of Fire.

 

[MarkBC]

When we went to Panaca/Pioche last fall, we discovered that Nevada is not a flat desert wasteland but a beautiful state with its own grandeur.

Yes -- actually, Nevada is anything BUT flat -- it's the most uniformly mountainous state in the United States -- border-to-border, east, west, north, south. There's almost no point in the state that's more than 20 miles from a significant mountain range.

See links to more states maps in this series here.

The Black Rock Desert is actually one of the biggest flat areas in the state -- and one of the biggest smooth-and-really-flat areas in the USA. That's why they use it for those "land-speed record" attempts. Speed-of-sound-on-land was achieved there.
The Black Rock is the big/long white area in NW Nevada (upper-center of this satellite view), with the Smoke Creek Desert attached like an appendix as the lobe on the southwest:



And desert? Absolutely!

 

[Dughlas Stiubhart]

K5s going sub-sonic on the Black Rock.

Camping on the Black Rock.

 

[MarkBC]

K5s going sub-sonic on the Black Rock.

Camping on the Black Rock.

Cool, Stew! It's such a great place -- like the Alvord playa, but more-so!
A lot more visitation than the Alvord, too ...and I'm not just talking about Burning Man week. The Black Rock is just a 2-hr drive on pavement from Reno, so it's not that remote and it's well-known in the area as a motor-sport playground...at times it's buzzing with motorcycles, jeeps, quads, trucks, etc (including my truck, of course ).
But "buzzing with" is relative (compared to, say, central Nevada), and if you avoid the most-obvious/popular spots or at off-times of the year (be careful of dampness) it's possible to have solitude, though you may still see others at a distance.

In the northeast arm of the desert (where it's softer/sandier, more-vegetated, not-very-drivable), between the Jackson Mts and the Black Rock Range, it's almost always empty at any time of the year. And still very cool, but in a different way.

 

[Lighthawk]

You've got some nice photos out there, Lighthawk!

Thanks Stew. It takes me back to the day of carrying a film camera (I used a trusty Oly OM-10) and Ektachrome, Agfachome, and Tri-X. I do think there's some loss from fading, scanning, dust, etc. I know a number of old family prints have gone purple.
It's better now when I can organize my photos in digital format.

 

[Dughlas Stiubhart]

It takes me back to the day of carrying a film camera (I used a trusty Oly OM-10) and Ektachrome, Agfachome, and Tri-X. I do think there's some loss from fading, scanning, dust, etc.


The not-so-great Kodachrome slides that I posted above were taken with my good ol' OM-1n.

 

[Smokecreek1]

Sure hope Bruno's is not next! Spent many years working out of there with the BLM. Remember bringing our first LE Ranger there and having stuffed trout for lunch-was so impressed he brought his wife out there from Susanville on his day off! Many a night spent in the railroad car motel rooms with the Three station black and white tv. And in the neutral bar eying the people who the next day we would try and catch shooting wild horses or digging up ark sites. Think about going out there, but every time i return to that part of the desert i see i see how it is degrading in some parts-back to the good old bad days of lot's of sheep and cows, cow pies, and all the fights we had to try and repair the environment (like High Rock Canyon)-or at least stop the damage---by trying to manage the cows, then I remember why so many of us took early retirement when we got earmarked by the "my way or the highway" political appointees who came in to reverse and ignore the law! Maybe thats why i spend so much time in Oregon. Anyway, what we we do without Brunos and the hot springs-sorry bout rambling -the mind goes when you retire!

 

[MarkBC]

For my return trip north from the eastern Sierra today (more on that trip in a separate post, later) I diverted a bit to the east and went up through Gerlach. I had lunch at Bruno's -- bacon double cheeseburger, and I fueled the truck at the Shell station -- regular unleaded.
Glad both services are still there...so far.