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The
Trip:
About 23 miles down the road, we reach a picturesque reminder of the area's stagecoach days called Dinner Station. This was a meal stop along the stage route. The stone building was one of Nevada's most popular inns at that time. Stagecoaches met Tuscarora-bound passengers in Elko and ferried them on a twelve-hour ride to their destination. Dinner Station provided a respite from their journey. Though it is now a private residence, it's still a well-known and recognized area landmark.
Robin Nunez, an archeologist with the U.S. Forest Service, who works in the Humboldt National Forest. Forest Service archeologists and other scholars are study the remains of the mining districts in the area. They study the historic sites and remains of the communities. From their field work and other research they are piecing together the miners' experience in this hard and remote part of the state.
Not
far from the boom town of Gold Creek was the mining district's separate
Chinese community, known today as Island Mountain. Some of the Chinese
in the area acquired placer mining rights, others labored on the Gold
Creek Mining Company's 10-mile ditch, and a handful worked as merchants,
cooks, and ran laundry services. After about 12 miles of well-graded dirt road, we return to Highway 225. Driving north through the community of Mountain City, it is a short distance — less than a mile — before we turn-off of the pavement again. We have to do a bit of four-wheeling to reach Placerville. This community was a mining center established in the late 1860s or early 1870s. The Placerville's population was made up largely of Chinese workers involved in placer mining activity. It's late in the afternoon, and after a full day of exploring ghost towns, we are ready to get settled for the night. We head back to Mountain City. On the second day of our adventure, we continue our search for more ghost towns. The morning finds us heading south on Highway 225. Just two and a half miles from Mountain City are the ruins of Rio Tinto.
Rio
Tinto was the company town built by the Mountain City Copper Company
on the site of an extremely rich mine in the 1930s. There is little
left of Rio Tinto today, just a handful of cement structures and foundations.
Many of the town structures where moved to Mountain City and other town
in the area after the mine closed.
A couple of miles further down Highway 225, we turn west off of the pavement and onto State Route 11A. This road takes us through a very scenic area called Columbia Basin. This road is often not passable in the winter due to heavy snowfall, but we are fortunate enough to find it recently graded and easy to travel. After about 20 miles of dirt road driving we meet up with Highway 226. We hop onto the pavement and continue our trip south towards Tuscarora. Tuscarora can trace it history to 1867 when a Shoshone revealed some gold to a trader on the Humbolt River. After the completion of the Central Pacific in 1869, the area attracted hundreds of men seeking their fortune. In 1871, W.O. Weed discovered very rich silver veins and moved most of population to what is now the present townsite. Each year new lodes were found, and after the "Grand Prize" bonanza was uncovered in 1876, Tuscarora boomed. The town was thick with machines and men. In addition, Tuscarora's China town was home to one of the largest Chinese population outside of San Francisco. Though
Tuscarora is now usually classified as a ghost town, there is plenty
of life here — much of it coming from the Tuscarora Hotel and Pottery
School. Ben Parks operates the school, which has become well known in
arts circles. It's a nice feeling to end a ghost towning trip in a ghost
town with so much life still in it. Thanks to the advisors and contributors of Wild Nevada Program #125:
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From
Elko we take State Route 225 north through the Adobe Range. The highway
follows the same route that the Tuscarora and Mountain City stage lines
used in the 1870s. 
As
we continue up the highway, we pass through the townsite of North Fork.
Then, just over 65 miles from Elko, we come to the Wild Horse State
Recreation Area located on the Wild Horse Reservoir. Here we turn off
of the Highway 225 and onto the Forest Service road that takes us into
the Island Mountain Mining District.
We
begin our tour of the Island Mountain Mining District with the former
boom town of Gold Creek.Gold
Creek seemed to have a bright future, full of prosperity and success.
At one point, it boasted of a three-story hotel and a dozen saloons;
as well as stores, lodging houses and a post office. The community had
a newspaper and was served three times a week by the stage from Elko.
Its boom was short-lived. The Gold Creek Mining Company went bankrupt
in 1897, it's coffers depleted by a massive Island Mountain ditch project
meant to provide water for the placer mining in the area. The mining
district was not able to recover from this substantial setback and eventually
faded back into the desert.
In
Rio Tinto, we meet up with Ernie Wilson. Ernie spent much of his youth
in the Cope Mining District and now lives nearby in Mountain City. 
After
visiting Rio Tinto, we head back down out of the hills to Patsville,
which faded into a ghost town the late 1940s. This was primarily a bedroom
community for Rio Tinto. Still, Patsville had its own mining activity
as well as a commercial area. There are quite a few structures still
standing to mark the Patsville townsite. The remains of the community
are easily found just off of Highway 225.