Highlights:  Highway 50 • Eureka Opera House • Nevada Northern Railway Museum • Highway 318 • Alien Research Center • Highway 375 • Rachel • Lil Ale'Inn • Tonopah

 

It's been 30 years since I first heard the phrase "Loneliest Road in America." You had me at "Lonely". That's all it took. I had to go check it out. When I first told riding buddies of my plans, the response was immediate: "Why!? There's nothing out there, it's a desert."

It was LIFE Magazine in July 1986 that first coined the phrase, and it was meant in a negative way. It was literal: nothing to see out here, just keep moving. Nevada holds one of the most remote, deserted stretches of road in the nation. The message in LIFE was a simple one—there is no logical reason for you to be on this road. Yet, that alone is why you have to come see it for yourself.

Join Pashnit Motorcycle Tours for the Loneliest Tour in America.

Loneliest Tour in America

The Loneliest Tour begins in Fallon, Nevada, home of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, better known as TOPGUN Flight School. Reports abound of riders being buzzed by fighter jets out in the open desert. Lucky day if you see one conducting low-level flights. East of Fallon is a massive sand dune that lines the road.

Sand Mountain is a singing sand dune 20 miles east of Fallon, Nevada. The dune is two miles long and 600 feet high. The sand originates from ancient Lake Lahontan, which for the most part dried up 9,000 years ago. The location is quite popular with sand rail owners. It lasts just a moment, then disappears from view. Highway 50 flows across flat terrain before finally beginning a soft climb to Austin.

If you view a topographic map of the United States, you may quickly notice a characteristic unique to Nevada. The state isn't flat; rather, it's demarcated by a series of north-south ridgelines with broad, flat valleys in between. These ridgelines, while technically considered mountain ranges, span upwards above 8,000 feet. This is high desert. Land above 5,000 feet is covered in forests that are snowy in winter, with mild to hot temperatures in summer. Riding above 5,000 feet, there are pinyon pines and junipers everywhere.

After 110 miles, the elevation begins to climb into Austin. During its mining boomtown days in 1862, some 10,000 people lived here. A fraction of those remain, and to keep things interesting, Highway 50 throws out a few hairpin curves up and over Hickson Summit as you leave town and flows out into open desert, making for Eureka. 

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Devils Gate Summit delivers us into Eureka 70 miles later across expansive, open high-desert riding. The road is a vanishing point on the horizon and the ride can be mesmerizing, even spiritual. Just you, the bike, the road. The road is so deserted, we stop the tour and park our bikes in the middle of the highway for photos. 

Eureka downtown is dominated by the Eureka Opera House, circa 1880. The last time we were here in Eureka, a docent gave the tour group a personal tour of the historic opera house and the courthouse across the street. The courthouse is stamped with 1879 on the outside and is still in use today. It holds original furniture from the 1880s. The pressed-tin ceiling is also original, and even the walk-in vault remains the same. In the back of the building, the original jail cells from 1880 also remain.

Originally known for silver discoveries, a massive circular open-pit mine in operation today on the west end of town is clearly visible from the highway. The mine is estimated to contain 1.4 billion pounds of molybdenum, which has many uses but is used primarily in creating steel alloys.

For all the talk about vanishing points and the long straight road, Highway 50 does have curves, but they lazily curl around low ridgelines—the aforementioned ripples in the earth's surface so pronounced in form when looking at your relief map.

Highway 50 was originally known as the Lincoln Highway, and its inception dates back to 1912 when the original route was created to link New York City to San Francisco. The original length spanned 3,389 miles, linking Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. The original route connected over 700 towns in 1915.

Today, we've got a straight shot of 78 miles to reach Ely, which experienced its mining origins in 1915. Boom and bust have created numerous cycles, the most recent in 2005 due to high demand for copper beneath the town.

The open desert and lack of foliage hide the fact that Ely lies at 6,400 feet and experiences extreme day-night temperature differences year-round. In February 2009, the low temperature hit -30 degrees. Ely is also the eastern terminus of our ride, and we expect a cold morning after spending our first night in town. The railroad museum here is a highlight of our day as we stroll through the workshops that still keep locomotives and rail cars operational alongside numerous rolling stock on display in the train yard.

219 mph...

Ely is also home to the Silver State Classic, the fastest road race in the world on public roads, spanning a 90-mile stretch of Highway 318 headed south out of town. The highest average speed was once a mere 207 mph, set in 2000. However, as speeds continue to increase, a record average race speed of 219 mph was achieved by Robert Allyn during the May 2017 Nevada Open Road Challenge. The race is unique in that anyone 21 years or older can enter any automobile. If your vehicle can average 95 mph or greater and meet safety requirements, you can race. Entrants have spanned full-on race cars and high-end exotics to the family station wagon.

In Crystal Springs—which is more a desert intersection rather than a town—we can't miss the Alien Research Center, playing off the alien theme. If NorCal gets its claim to fame with Bigfoot, Central Nevada exhibits a 20-foot-tall tin alien to draw in the sparse passing tourist to the curio shop selling all manner of alien paraphernalia & accouterments.  

Highway 375 isn't long; rather, it spans a mere 98 miles, yet it's one of the least-traveled highways in the state and traverses the northern edges of Nellis Air Force Base.

From the Hiko crossroads, the route westward curls between the Pahranagat and Mount Irish ranges to ascend 5,592-foot Hancock Summit, followed by the now-familiar descent into another expansive valley. Rachel, population 48, sits in the middle of this expansive flat valley at an elevation of 4,840 feet. Nevada has some very long open stretches of road. If you were seeking the open road, you found it.

Alien Road...

Rachel, Nevada is little more than a loose collection of buildings in a broad valley on the north end of Nellis AFB, more commonly known as Area 51. Highway 375 was renamed the Extraterrestrial Highway in 1996, and Rachel does its best to capitalize on this designation. Rachel offers a small café & motel; it's a mandatory stop. Inside are assorted books on alien conspiracies, abductions, and depictions of alien life in numerous murals around the building. The ceiling is adorned in dollar bills from travelers. Plus, we have to check out the tow truck parked out front holding up a captured flying saucer. On our last visit, someone had placed their tinfoil hat and left it there—presumably for the next-in-line believer.

Walls are covered in photographs of assorted UFOs frozen in mid-flight. Is that a hubcap thrown up in the air or the real thing? We'll never know. Photos date back several decades plus, for icing on the cake, some rather authentic-looking photos of an alien autopsy. And the kicker—the book on alien propulsion dynamics—that's the one I brought home for my son. There’s a museum-like quality to the Little A'Le'Inn, and it's well worth the stop. Plus, it helps that there's nothing around for 100 miles.

Space Advertising...

A few years ago, behind the Little A'Le'Inn, there used to be the KFC Man. The huge logo was built in 2006 and consisted of 65,000 1-foot-square colored panels to create a massive mural of Colonel Sanders' head. It just makes you hungry for chicken—something to think about for the next 100 miles. The mural was designed to be seen from space... and sell chicken.

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West of Rachel is open cattle range, so keep a keen eye out for cows wandering about. Word has it they are the dumbest animals on the planet—at least so claims the tour guide, who was raised on a beef farm.

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Next Gas...

West of Rachel is open cattle range, so keep a keen eye out for cows wandering about. Word has it they are the dumbest animals on the planet—at least so claims the tour guide, who was raised on a beef farm.

At Warm Springs, the sign reads "Next Gas 111 Miles." It may look like a town on your map, but in real life, it's just a lonesome intersection in the high desert. One distinct landmark along this portion is a white missile mounted on a post; the sign reads "Tonopah Test Range, operated by Sandia National Laboratory, Bureau of Land Management".

After spending the last two days away from people, the arrival in Tonopah is either a welcome return to civilization or a sudden shock to the system—all this hustle and bustle, vehicles, and gasp, stoplights! Can we go back—to the wide-open country, the 70-mile straights, and the 7,000-foot mountain ranges we've been rising and falling over? Yes, you can. Now that you've ridden the Loneliest Highways in America, anytime you want to feel lonely, just point the bike to the heart of Nevada.

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