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Article: Rhyolite, queen of the desert. (gold mining town in Amargosa Desert, Nevada)(Western Wanderings)
- Article from:
- Sunset
- Article date:
- March 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Sunset Publishing Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It was late afternoon when Claudia Reidhead led me down Golden Street. A low sun polished the concrete pillars of the John Cook Bank Building and gilded the cut-stone facade of the Porter Brothers Store. "They built to last," Claudia said. "Rhyolite was going to be the queen city of the West."
The West is littered with the skeletons of settlements that dreamed of becoming queen cities. But Rhyolite gave it a better go than most. The name comes from a volcanic rock, the lava form of granite in which gold is sometimes found. Gold was what Shorty Harris and Ed Cross sought--and struck--in 1904, when they carried their picks and shovels to this corner of Nevada's ...