Back on the highway, the lonely shopkeepers sell t-shirts to the lonely motorists which proclaim “I Survived the Loneliest Road in America.” Judy and I did not feel that our survival was in question, although there are many long stretches of this highway where no civilization is visible from horizon to horizon; you can set up a camera and tripod for 10 minutes at a time astride the yellow line. This route could just as well been labeled “The Straightest Road in America,” as it stretches eastward from here, basin to range to basin, barely deviating from its relentless latitudinal path.

I found myself wondering how this route might have appeared to the pioneers who wrested it away from its Native American origins. I did not have to wonder long, however, because we soon turned off highway 50 to drive instead on its primitive equivalent, FR 100 just a few hundred yards to the south. Here the vista allowed me to go back in time to the Nevada of the 1860’s. This dirt road, like Rt. 50, extends east across the Big Smokey Valley into the snow-covered mountains of the Toquima range. Click on the picture above to experience this transformation from the present to the past, from pavement to path.