Since we drove into Tonopah in the dark, after checking out the Mizpah Hotel – restored by the Cline Family of Sonoma and voted # 1 haunted hotel two years running – we drove down to the local Standard Station that had a view towards the area that we had just driven through in the dark. Tonopah is a mining town, starting in 1901, it produced gold and silver through the depression. Now the big money is in mining Lithium and tourism.

Then we wandered over to the local cemetery where we agreed the saddest identification tag we saw was a grave marker that said; At Rest – Laura Smith – Died September 16, 1906 – A Kind Lady – Life Became A Burden – R. I. P.

On a bluff overlooking the cemetery, are new manufactured houses that don’t have the charm of the old houses but are much, much, easier to live in. Outside of the town, is another cemetery of sorts, a World War II airbase used to train B-24 pilots.

Driving from Tonopah to Cedar City, Utah is all in the Great Basin. It’s called the Great Basin because no rivers in it flow out. Because it is in the Sierra Nevada’s rain shadow, there is not much rain so the rivers never had enough water to cut their way to the sea. But a bigger force is at play in the creation of the Great Basin; the land between Reno, in the west of the Basin, Salt Lake City, in the east of the basin, is pulling apart. 15 million years ago, they were about 250 miles apart and now they are about 400 miles apart. When they were 250 miles apart, Nevada was a high plateau – like the Tibetian Plateau today – but, as the land pulled apart it dropped, breaking into small blocks that tilt as they drop. The high side of a block is a mountain chain running north-south, the low end, a valley (or a graben, if you want to be technical). As we drive east, we drive across a valley on a straight road, then up and through the mountains on a winding road. We repeat this several times and it is great driving. We even pass a small heard of horses with a couple close enough to photograph.