7-20-2021 HAWTHORNE, NV

 The drive here was very twisty with many 180 deg. turns, and the Donner Pass, elev. 7,000+ ft. was a challenge.  The horizon was virtually not visible for the last stretch due to wild fire smoke.  The rv park, Whiskey Flats, lay under a blanket of brown smoke.  We know that there are mountains all around but you couldn’t see them for two reasons:  smoke and stinging eyes.  Yesterday afternoon, a small thunderstorm blew through with a few scary bolts of lightning thrown in, just to make it interesting.  The folks here are delighted with the rain but not the lightning bolts which started some of the fires in the first place.

The Reno skyline while passing through

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Upon arrival at Whiskey Flats

This morning just before departing

The rain scrubbed the air some and the mountains around us reappeared by this morning.

 

Hawthorne really bustled in earlier days.  Nearby Walker Lake used to be a formidable presence, lying between the mines and ranches on the south side and supplies for the townsfolk on the north.  To the west were sharp cliffs and to the east were vast sand dunes so transportation of materials was difficult.  It required horse-drawn wagons that had to skirt about the difficult terrain and added hours to a single trip.  The word-of-mouth local lore has it that late in the 1800s, a fellow named Knapp arrived in Hawthorne from out east where he had been a riverboat pilot.  He stared at the lake and had a vision.  He acquired two steamboats and ports were established at the north and south ends of Walker Lake.  Not far from the southern port, the community of Hawthorne sprang up.  The steamboats trimmed more than 30 miles off of a one-way trip from north to south bringing food supplies, lumber and the nearby mines’ railroad repair materials to the residents of Hawthorne.  Business on both ends was brisk.  This didn’t last long.  The shipping railroads came along and the steamboats and the ports slowly faded to a distant memory. 

 

Later, Hawthorne became a significant military depot (the largest in the USA and the world after the one in New Jersey blew up) and once again the community thrived to some degree.  Walker Lake became a big recreational area with camping, boating and fishing tournaments.  The waters of Walker Lake are receding now because private water rights at the feeders have diverted the water supply to places where there’s more money in it;  from certain vantage points it is possible to see both ends of the lake at once. The lake is currently only 11 miles long and the dissolved solids in the water have all but obliterated the native cutthroat trout. 

Abandoned fishing boat on Walker Lake

The military presence is still active but greatly diminished and Hawthorne is quite depressed with a population of a little over 2,000.  There are a few restaurants and casinos, a sprinkle of gas stations and a grocery store.  The school and court house from earlier times in the 1900s are boarded up and closed, weeds and sand are what is left of the town’s landscape.  Leaves me with a rather forlorn feeling.

 

Under a clear blue sky and morning sun, we are packed up and rolling down the road to our next destination:  Goldfield, Nevada, to see what there might be to explore and discover.