Metropolis

Metropolis was named for what it was meant to become. In 1910 Harry Pierce's Pacific Reclamation Company, a New York land firm, bought some 40,000 acres of sagebrush near the head of the Humboldt and laid out a city on it: graded streets, cement sidewalks, fire hydrants and street lights, a four-block business district, and a Southern Pacific spur from Wells that opened in 1911. In December of that year a three-story brick hotel opened with private baths, electric light and an elevator. A dam on Bishop Creek, north of town, was to water the farms.

What the company had not done was secure the water. In a state where every drop of a river is claimed by someone downstream, it had built its dam without approval and without sufficient rights, and in 1913 farmers at Lovelock, near the far end of the Humboldt, took it to court. The ruling left Metropolis enough water for about 4,000 of its 40,000 acres. Drought, crickets and jackrabbits took much of the rest. The hotel had already closed in 1913; the company went bankrupt in 1920, the railroad pulled its track in the mid-1920s, and the hotel burned in 1936. The post office lasted until 1942, and the school held classes into the 1940s.

What stands now is the front arch of the brick Lincoln School, the hotel's foundations a quarter mile away, and the cemetery, with ranch land all around. The dam is still up the creek.

Metropolis is about twelve miles northwest of Wells by county road. There are no services, and the ruins are fragile; look and leave them standing.