U.S. 50 — The Loneliest Road in America
The 1986 insult that became an invitation — 320 miles of US-50 across central Nevada, from Fallon to the Utah line, linking petroglyphs, ghost towns, a singing dune, and the state's only national park.
The Route at a Glance
In July 1986, Life magazine ran a short item that accidentally created a tourist attraction. It quoted a AAA man calling the central Nevada stretch of US-50 'the loneliest road in America,' with 'no points of interest' and a warning not to drive it unless travelers were sure of their survival skills. Nevada did the only sensible thing and put the insult on a road sign. Four decades later the name has stuck, the state hands out a 'survival guide' you can get stamped along the way, and the joke has quietly become the point: this is a drive you take precisely because it is empty.
The emptiness is old and earned. US-50 here follows the original line of the Pony Express and the Overland stage, and later the Lincoln Highway — the first road across the country — and the route has always been about getting through the Great Basin rather than stopping in it. The geography sets the rhythm: the road runs dead straight across a flat sagebrush valley, climbs a pass over one of the long north-south mountain ranges, drops into the next near-identical valley, and does it again, and again, for three hundred-odd miles. It is the cleanest drive through the Basin and Range you will ever take.
The lonely part begins east of Fallon. Within a few miles the last farms give way to desert and the first stops appear: the boulder-field rock art of Grimes Point, then the great singing dune of Sand Mountain off to the north. From there the road climbs toward Austin, a near-vertical silver camp clinging to the side of the Toiyabe Range at the midpoint of the drive, and just beyond it the cliff-and-canyon petroglyphs of Hickison. This western half is the loneliest of the lonely — the longest gaps between anything at all.
The eastern half is the historical heart. Eureka arrives first, the best-preserved mining town on the road, its brick Main Street and restored 1880 opera house intact. Then comes Ely, the copper-mining crossroads and the one real town out here, where the Nevada Northern Railway still runs its steam-powered Ghost Train. South of Ely a worthwhile detour reaches the six beehive kilns of Ward Charcoal Ovens. And at the far end, just shy of the Utah line, the road delivers you to Great Basin National Park — bristlecone pines, a glacier, and a limestone cave, the payoff the AAA man somehow forgot to mention.
Treat the distances seriously. Gas, food, and lodging cluster in Fallon, Austin, Eureka, and Ely, and the stretches between them run sixty to seventy empty miles — fill the tank at every town, carry water, and do not count on a cell signal. The road is fully paved and easy to drive; the real hazards are fatigue, weather on the passes in winter, and livestock or deer at dawn and dusk. Most travelers run it in a long day, but it rewards two, with a night in Ely or Eureka to actually see the towns. Pick up the official survival guide in Fallon or Ely and collect the stamps if you like a souvenir.
For all the talk of nothing, the loneliest road is one of the most honest drives in the West — a straight, quiet line through country most highways are built to avoid. The 1986 verdict described the windshield and never the view out the side window. Slow down, take the side roads, and the empty stretch between the ranges turns out to be the whole reason to come.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
8 stops along the route, in driving order from Fallon to Great Basin National Park.
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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let U.S. 50 — The Loneliest Road in America do what it does best.
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