Rhyolite, Nevada

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Rhyolite, Nevada is a ghost town in Nye County, Nevada east of Death Valley near Beatty, Nevada.

Gold was discovered in the area by Shorty Harris and E.L. Cross on August 4, 1904 and a gold rush soon followed. The town was named after the local deposits of the mineral rhyolite which contained much of the gold. The most important operation was the Montgomery Shoshone mine and a mill was constructed to process its ore. The mine was sold to industrialist Charles M. Schwab in 1906 for a reported 5 million dollars. By 1907, the town had electricity and its population may have reached 10,000 people. However, the Panic of 1907 is believed to have dealt a death blow to the town. Production began to slow down by 1908 and the mine and mill were closed in 1911. The lights and power were turned off in 1916.

The Bottle House, a house built from thousands of beer and liquor bottles by Tom Kelly in 1906, was restored by Paramount Pictures in 1925 for use in a movie.

The Cook Bank Building was used in both the 1998 film Six String Samurai as well as the 2005 film The Island.

The old train station still remains with a caboose sitting nearby. The building is in remarkably good shape. There is an abandoned mine entrance with a posted warning "Unsafe Mine Stay out, stay alive!"

Scotty's Castle in Death Valley is named after Walter E. Scott, who visited Rhyolite often, and was a friend of Albert Johnson, a Chicago millionaire, who built the castle. Scotty spread the story that he had built the castle using profits from his gold mine.