Rhyollite Ghost Casino. Rhyolite, Nevada. January 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
The “Rhyollite Ghost Casino” was originally the railroad station in what is now the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada.
This building in the ghost town of Rhyolite was originally a (very expensive) railway station that was abandoned when the town itself was abandoned after the nearby mines ran out of profitable ore in the early 1900s. According to several sources I have read, the building was then turned into a bar and casino, and many years later was for a time a curio shop and museum. Today it is boarded up and behind cyclone fences – more off-limits than almost any other structure in the ghost town.
I would live to get beyond the fencing and photograph this building more closely. It looks, in some ways, surprisingly modern for something that was constructing in the middle of nowhere about a century ago, and there are a number of interesting elements in the architecture. (I have photographed some of them, and eventually I’ll perhaps post a few.) The green sign on the front of the building appears to be a repurposed sign from the railroad station days. Underneath the fading “Rhyolite Ghost Casino” lettering, barely readable in this photograph, is and older sign declaring in larger print, “Rhyolite.” A walk around the structure reveals other interesting details, including one area that looks like it might have been a booth for a fortune-teller.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.