Westworld Alberta
Issue link: http://westworldmagazine.ama.ab.ca/i/53603
(clockwise from top left) The gold-mining ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada; tourists gather to watch the Bellagio Fountains dance in Las Vegas; a cowpoke in the Nevada desert; Hoover Dam, which supplies water to more than 25 million Americans; botanical gardens at the Springs Preserve; sedimentary rock formations at Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas. "That cliff band reminds me of a huge pile of Neapolitan ice cream," says a wisecracking Matt Replogle, pointing at a cliff with alternating bands of red, pink and copper-green rock. Astride a docile steed named Dollar, I'm fi nding it hard to believe we're a mere 45-minute commute from the artifi ce of the Las Vegas Strip. I'm clip-clopping behind Replogle, along with a dozen other inept cowpokes, while a small herd of wild burros grazes at a careful distance. Then, as if scripted by our guide, a hawk pierces the silence with a haunting screech that is perfectly matched to what seems to be a surreal, cartoonist's rendition of a desert landscape. Replogle, a wrangler from Oklahoma, also fi ts the scene. His southern drawl is straight out of a spaghetti western and he has the taut, wiry frame you'd expect of some- one who wrestles steers for a living. Throughout the ride he maintains an intelligent banter, part tongue-in-cheek comedian and part earnest park interpreter. "If you're ever thirsty out here you can crack one of those over a rock and get at some water," Replogle says, nodding his Stetson toward a barrel cactus at the side of the trail. WATER ISN'T ALL THAT MEN AND WOMEN THIRST FOR IN NEVADA. A quest for gold has tempted many to the edge of avarice. On a brisk afternoon, with purplish clouds gathering over the desert, I explore the ruins of Rhyolite, one of dozens of gold-mining ghost towns found in the state. Tucked into a shallow valley just off Hwy. 374, two-and-a- half hours northwest of Vegas, this relic sits like an abandoned movie set overlooking a pitiless landscape. It's an eerie place; window openings stare out from roofl ess buildings like empty eye sockets, and there is a pervasive, musty smell of memories. In 1908, however, 8,000 people lived here, making Rhyolite the state's third largest city of the time, with banks, hardware stores, bawdy houses, saloons and a station house for the long-defunct Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. I leave Rhyolite and head down the road to Beatty, the self- proclaimed gateway to Death Valley. Here the tenacious spirit of a mining town is still alive. Beatty is also uncomfortably close to that mysterious, off-limits zone known as the Nevada Test Site, where up until the early 1990s the military detonated hundreds of atomic bombs. At the Beatty Museum, I check out an old hazmat suit, tattered and not exactly confi dence-inspiring. That night I sidle up to the Sourdough Saloon as a guest of the Beatty Historical Society, its members outfi tted in 19th-century period costume. As I stare down a steak as big as a Frisbee, Joannie Jarvis, a fi fth-generation Nevadan looking ravishing in an Edwardian-era dress, pulls up a stool next to me and shares her love of small town life. "I have no desire to move to Vegas. I mean this is a mining town and it's boom and bust. That's just the way it is," says Jarvis. Nevada, fi ercely independent and gregarious, has a way of sinking its teeth into the soul. WESTWORLD >> FEBRUARY 2012 33