It’s about 75 miles on that Loneliest Road, Route 50, from Ely to the town of Eureka, Nevada. There’s some awesome high desert beauty between the two towns, but not a whole lot more. The town was supposedly named for the victory cry of one of the earliest miners in the area. Eureka!
In the car, I annoy Bob and Jarrett by reading aloud some of the Eureka material that I have in our box of books. All the writers mention that Eureka was known in its heyday in the late nineteenth century as “The Pittsburgh of The West.” It was a mining town. A big success. With filthy air from some 16 smelters operating full time during the “furious boom of the 1880s.” Scads of money were made off of some 50 mines nearby where there was a lot of lead, some silver, gold and even zinc. As we drove into town, there was a familiar looking pile of slag on the right side of the road. We felt at home. We Pittsburghers know slag piles. The one at the east end of Eureka was blacker than most around Pittsburgh, but they weren’t making steel here, they were trying to get impurities out of ore. There was lots of lead mixed in with the silver. Both minerals proved to be valuable. The nineteenth cemtury skies darkened with smoke. And this slag was the leftover waste that no one wanted. Pile it up.
“Let’s just drive through and take a look,” I say. Jarrett goes slowly, and we all check things out and then pull into a parking lot at the west end of town.
“There are at least five things I want to shoot,” says Bob.
“Let’s go all the way back through,” I suggest. “I want to go in the General Store way at the other end of town. See what’s going on there.”
Bob says, “Yes, I love their sign.”
While I go in to see what’s going on in the classic looking General Store And Mini Mart, Bob and Jarrrett start looking for “frames.” We’re working fast because it looks and smells like rain. The sky is threatening, darkened by rain clouds not smelting.
In the store, I meet Tony Rowley (prounounced Ro-lee, like Roly poly) and his mother Leona. She runs the store and has been doing that for over 30 years. “She’s famous for her coffee,” says Tony. “And she knows some of the history of this great little town.”
Tony is an unofficial one-man Chamber of Commerce. He loves Eureka. “It’s the best place to live in America.”
“Well, is it lonely?” I ask. “You are on the Loneliest Road in America.”
“No, we’re not lonely,” he says. “That’s silly. People are moving here. Mining may start again soon. Things are going well.”
I explain what brings us to town and ask Tony if he’ll do an on-camera interview with us.
“Sure,” he says.
“Let me get the guys,” I say.
We interview Tony outside the store. He’s great. Then we get some shots of him with his mother inside. After she puts on a pot of coffee (“I always use Farmers Blend Coffee,” she says in mock-TV-commercial style,) we interview her across the counter. She sells a lot of bananas, she says. And apparently the long wooden table on the left side of the store is a community gathering spot, especially in the morning. “I sell a lot of coffee.”
There are bags of grain, newspaper clippings, candy bars, used paperbacks piled up on shelves along the opposite wall, all kinds of stuff. And a mounted deer head on the back wall. “Guess who shot that?” says Tony. “You?” I ask. “No, she did,” he says, poimting at his mother. “When was that? Twenty years ago?”
“About that,” she concurs.
We talk about the store, the town (“You can’t leave without visiting the Opera House, the Court House and the Museum,” Leona tells us,) and the Lincoln Highway. I think they prefer thinking of the road as the Lincoln rather than the Loneliest. And soon we’re talking about various old routes, so I go out to the van and get the Butko book to show some of the maps he has marked in there. “Are you going to leave me this book?” asks Leona with a smile.
“No, ma’am,” says Bob. “We need that. That’s our Bible. We wouldn’t know where we are if we didn’t have that book.”
Before long, we meet two of Tony’s brothers, one a real brother and the other an honorary, but everyone’s trying to help. We ask where we should go for lunch, and there seems to be no agreement. One says the Owl is good, another recommends the Chinese at the Eureka Cafe and someone else says the diner just across the street has good take-out. It’s drizzling and it’s getting late, so we decide to eat lunch before getting more shots. We end up at the Eureka Cafe where the young Chinese waitress speaks very little English. She takes the orders and then she cooks them. Jarrett’s hope for chicken and broccoli gets all mixed up, but Bob and I are happy with our lo mein and fried rice.
After lunch, Bob and Jarrett (holding an umbrella over the camera) get shots of all the things that Leona told us we had to see. I also follow orders and go in the Courthouse to see some of the old photos on display there. The town’s history is incredibly well documented in beautiful black and white photographs. I find out that the pictures are all stored at the Eureka Sentinel Museum just across the street, and I head up there. The historian/manager/curator there, Ms. Ree Taylor, offers to help me with history and photos and anything else I might need if we decide to put together a story about Eureka. That seems likely. It’s a charming place, and the people are truly friendly.