Frank “Shorty” Harris (1856 to 1934) was one of Death Valley’s most colorful characters. He was a charmer, a braggart, a drunk, and a man with a knack for finding mineral wealth in one of the Earth’s most desolate places. He also, unfortunately, had a knack for boasting endlessly about his strikes, ensuring that the riches ended up in the hands of others who rushed to his discoveries while Shorty drank to his newfound wealth. His memory is etched in Death Valley at Harrisburg, named for him; at Ballarat, where he was the sole resident before his death; and at a spot just north of the Eagle Borax Works, where Shorty is buried, at his request, next to his friend Jimmy Dayton, who had been buried there for more than thirty years before Harris’ death.
Shorty’s most dramatic discovery was made in 1904, when he and fellow prospector Ernest “Ed” Cross found gold at what they would call the Bullfrog claim because the first piece of rock had a greenish tint and was about the size of a bullfrog. Shorty crowed to his buddies that the find was a “crackerjack” and added, “The district is going to be the banner camp of Nevada!” The two went to have their ore assayed in Goldfield. Harris, in a drunken celebration of their find, apparently sold his half for a mere $1,000, which he immediately squandered. Cross held on and did much better, eventually selling his claim for a reported $125,000. He used the money to buy a large ranch in Escondido, near San Diego. Harris was out of the picture and continued prospecting in Death Valley for his next big strike, which never came.
The real jackpot was located a couple of miles north of the Bullfrog claim, and the strike at the Montgomery Shoshone Mine made E. A. “Bob” Montgomery Death Valley’s first mining millionaire. The town that formed nearby was called Rhyolite in honor of the silica-laden volcanic rock found in the area.
By 1908, the Bullfrog Mining District was a true bonanza. In addition to Rhyolite were the satellite communities of Bullfrog, Gold Center, and Beatty. Population estimates of Rhyolite vary widely, from four thousand to double that number. The town could boast of all the modern conveniences, including electricity, telephones, and abundant running water, which was piped from springs at the source of the Amargosa River, one of the world’s longest underground rivers. Rhyolite featured a stock exchange, a board of trade, the Miners’ Union Hospital, an ice plant, stores and hotels, the First Presbyterian and St. Mary’s Catholic churches, the Arcade Opera House, the highly popular Alaska Glacier Ice Cream Parlor, and three public swimming pools.
This mercantile at rhyolite was built in 1906 of rudimentary materials. It is east of Golden Street, where the town’s more elaborate places of business stood.
Three railroads eventually served Rhyolite: the Las Vegas & Tonopah, the Tonopah & Tidewater, and the Bullfrog & Goldfield.
Even as all these refinements were blossoming in Rhyolite, most of the mines in the Bullfrog District were quickly tapping out. The big exception was the Montgomery Shoshone, which was the mainstay of Rhyolite, producing more than one million dollars in bullion in just three years. Virtually none of the stockholders, however, received a penny in dividends because of stock speculation and questionable financial dealings. Stock in the Montgomery Shoshone went from twenty-three dollars per share to a mere three dollars even as the mine was making money. By 1911, with the ore playing out, the stock value plummeted to four cents per share.
The financial demise of the Montgomery Shoshone and its subsequent closing was the final blow for the once-booming Bullfrog District. The last train left Rhyolite in 1913, the same year the post office closed. The Nevada-California Power Company took down its power lines in 1916.
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND RHYOLITE
As you drive up the wide dirt road from Nevada Highway 374, you will pass a turnoff .7 of a mile from the highway. That will take you to the town-site of Bullfrog, where there is one modern building and one ruin. It is also the route to the Bullfrog-Rhyolite Cemetery. More on that later.
The remnants of Rhyolite begin .7 of a mile north of the turnoff to Bullfrog. The site is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and occasionally volunteer caretakers oversee the site. If volunteers are there, they will likely be near the 1906 Tom T. Kelly Bottle House, which was erected in less than six months principally using Adolphus Busch beer bottles—about thirty thousand of them. A walking tour handout may be available at the restored bottle house, which is surrounded by elaborate fencing worthy of a high- security prison. Next door is a former general store.
The main drag through town is Golden Street, where Rhyolite’s most dramatic ruins reside, including the roofless, concrete, two-story schoolhouse, built in 1909 and the last major building to be erected in Rhyolite. When it was finished, the town was already beginning to empty, and the school was never at capacity.
North of the schoolhouse are the foundations and walls of once-three-story Overbury Block. Across the street is the lonely façade of the 1906 Porter Brothers Store. H. D. and L. D. Porter brought merchandise across Death Valley from their store in Randsburg, California, and purchased a lot in Rhyolite for the then-outrageous sum of twelve hundred dollars. Their store became the favorite of Rhyolite’s citizens, a place where, according to the Porter brothers, “We handle all good things except whiskey.”
The John S. Cook Bank remains one of Nevada’s most photographed ruins. It has appeared in everything from music videos to Hollywood movies.
The Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Depot awaits extensive renovation. The Bureau of Land Management hopes that the landmark building will eventually be the centerpiece of rhyolite.
Up the street stands the 1908 John S. Cook Bank, one of the most photographed ghost town structures in the American West. (This is the same John S. Cook who also had a bank, still standing, in Goldfield [see page 279].) The jagged ruins have appeared in calendars, television shows, and movies. In its prime, the three-story building featured Italian marble floors, Honduran mahogany woodwork, and stained glass windows. The bank occupied the first floor, brokerage offices filled the upper floors, and the Rhyolite post office was in the basement.
Farther up Golden Street is the most imposing—and, at $130,000, the most expensive—edifice in town, the 1909 Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Depot. At this writing, it is unceremoniously surrounded by a chain-link fence, but there are hopes of eventually restoring it and opening it to the public.
If you follow a dirt road southeast from the depot, you will come around to two substantial buildings, a 1907 rock residence that perhaps was a brothel and, nearby, the 1907 concrete jail. As you walk or drive the back streets of town, you’ll see many signs pointing out what once stood at various locations.
As mentioned earlier, you passed the turnoff to the cemetery on your way into town. Return to that junction, turn west, and head .3 of a mile to the old railroad grade heading south. Down that grade .6 of a mile is the turnoff east to the Bullfrog-Rhyolite Cemetery, where you will find about two dozen graves marked by either a fence, a headstone, or both. The most unusual marker is a carefully carved cylindrical stone for James C. Clayton (1866 to 1905), who died just as Rhyolite began to boom.
H. D. and L. D. Porter erected a general store in then-booming Rhyolite in 1906. Theirs was the most popular store of its type in town.
WHEN YOU GO
Rhyolite is 3.9 miles southwest of Beatty on Nevada Highway 374. Beatty is 68 miles southeast of the Lida Junction turnoff to Gold Point, 83 miles southeast of Goldfield, and 116 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Note: The ghost towns of Death Valley are nearby, southwest of Rhyolite. You can track them down with one of my earlier books, Southern California’s Best Ghost Towns.