(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Support for "Wild Nevada Memories" is provided by the William N. Pennington Foundation (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Millie Hopper and Millard Reed.

- [Announcer] Gail and John Sande.

- [Announcer] Margaret and Charles Burback.

- [Announcer] And by individual members.

(upbeat guitar music) - [Announcer] It's been 20 years since "Wild Nevada" first appeared on public television.

Over the years, many people have asked, "What's it like to travel around and make the show?"

So, let's celebrate the 20th anniversary by reliving one of our favorite adventures and sharing some "Wild Nevada Memories."

(upbeat guitar music) - Hi, welcome to "Wild Nevada."

I'm Dave Santina.

- And I'm Chris Orr.

This trip, we're gonna see one of the state's natural wonders and explore a little bit of Nevada's glory days.

- We have a special guest guide with us this time.

It's Rich Moreno, publisher of Nevada Magazine.

Hi, Rich.

- Hi.

- At the time, Rich Moreno was the publisher of Nevada Magazine, and we were really excited to have someone in that position picking a trip out for us.

- From there, we're going to The Sump which is one of my favorite places.

Unusual name, but certainly an interesting site, geological site.

And then from The Sump we're gonna spend the night in Tonopah.

See the Tonopah Mining Park tomorrow and finish up in Manhattan, an old mining town.

- Interesting collection of places.

What makes you choose them?

- Well, this is a pretty remote part of Nevada, Central Nevada is, and not a lot of people live out here.

And so what I like about it is that you can go out to these places and feel like you're discovering them for the first time.

- [Dave] Sounds good.

- Now we're beginning on Walker Lake, which is popular with fishermen and people who enjoy water recreation, but it also has a rich history of legend associated with it.

- Oh, definitely.

The Paiutes had a number of legends about Walker Lake, including supposedly there's a sea serpent that lives here.

- If the Loch Ness monster is Nessie, would the Walker Lake monster be Walkie?

(upbeat music) - This was our first trip with Rich Moreno.

And it was also kind of the first trip where we reached out to someone who knew Nevada, because he wrote about it and asked him to sort of plan a trip for us, which he did.

And he mapped out this trip that took us from Walker Lake through Candelaria and on into Manhattan.

And it was, he really did a great job at finding us places in Central Nevada, where most people would never take the time to go look.

- Well, we're here in Candelaria which is a 1870s, 1880 mining town.

And this was a town that had pretty much its peak between that period of time, 1882 about, until the 1930s, it lasted.

But it once had it's own railroad that ran off the Carson and Colorado line.

And there's a lot of interesting stories that are associated with Candelaria.

- [Chris] There's not a lot of it left.

- [Rich] No, unfortunately, as you can see there's some modern mining that's gone on around here, some vandalism.

There was a fire in 1882.

Just neglect.

Things kind of disappear over time.

- [Dave] Seems like a lot of the towns those days had a fire that took them apart.

- Well, in here it was particularly bad because water was a real precious commodity.

In the early days of the town, the water would cost like a dollar a gallon.

And I read somewhere where it took, if you wanted to take a bath, it was like two bucks.

- Without doing the "Wild Nevada" shows, there's so many ghost towns that I don't think I would've ever gone to.

And Candelaria is probably one of them, is that I don't know that I would've, on my own, just gone out there and hiked up to it.

But, I'm so glad that we got to explore so many of these places.

we really needed guys like Rich to take us to places like that because I wouldn't have a clue what that was, really, or any of the history, and I wouldn't be even interested in it without him.

- [Dave] We come upon old houses that were actually built into a hill.

This helps with insulation, an important aspect of daily life in a harsh climate.

The roofs were made of sod.

They had a lawn on top of their house.

Inside one of their houses we find cardboard nailed up for additional insulation.

It's not exactly fiberglass, but it worked in the old days.

- Now you see this in a lot of old towns where they'll use whatever material is available.

That's why some places, they have bottle houses, - Yeah.

- which are whole buildings that are made out of bottles.

And in other cases, they use old plywood or, any kind of wood and material.

- This is a great looking building.

- Oh, yeah.

You know, if you look at the way that the building has collapsed, you can really get a good idea of how it all happened.

I mean, we're standing on what was once a wall, and obviously the wall fell down and then the whole thing just fell in on itself.

So, it's kind of interesting to see.

- [Dave] And it's pretty spectacular when you look at it with all the timber sticking out and you can just, - Oh, yeah.

- [Dave] you can just almost feel this thing, just go wham, collapsing in.

- Oh, yeah.

- [Dave] You wonder if anybody was around to see it?

- Well, I think what's part of the fun about being in a place like this is that you get to play detective, essentially.

And you try to figure out things like that.

Like how did this building fall apart?

How did they build that roof, et cetera.

- [Chris] The mines flourished for a while, but like so many boom and bust stories, it came to an end.

A fire in the early 1880s, followed by a strike began the decline of Candelaria.

Today, a modern gold mining operation has changed the landscape.

And what you see here is just about all that's left of Candelaria's history.

(stones rattling) (upbeat music) To reach The Sump from Candelaria, we returned to US 95 South and drive about 14 miles parallel... Rich just kept talking about a Sump, and I kept thinking, "Where are we going?"

You know?

Why is this place called a "Sump"?

- I just thought that sounded so nasty.

And the thought, that's like a tank of stuff you'd clean out behind your trailer, right?

- [Chris] About half a mile before the junction, we turned left and go off road.

A four-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle-- - That's JR, our audio guy, JR Beardsley.

He's just hiding in the truck there.

There was nowhere to put him so he just had to sit there (laughing).

Look at these, he must be laying down.

- This is where, basically, we drop into the wash area where the Sump drains.

The Sump, of course being an unusual name because-- - What is a Sump?

- It basically means like a cesspool.

- Yeah.

- [Rich] When you look in the, yeah.

So, - What is this place you're gonna take us to?

- You're taking us to a cesspool?

- Right, no, it's actually a drainage area.

It's a natural drainage area which is what's caused these formations in the minerals that are there to form the towers, et cetera.

As a harder rock has remained behind, as the softer material has been washed out through erosion.

So that's where the name comes from.

That it's basically a drainage area, a natural drainage area.

- Do you ever tell anybody that your favorite place in the entire state is a cesspool?

- No, I usually say it's the rubies.

(laughing) (upbeat music) - So every time you see a truck drive by somebody had to jump out of a vehicle, run around, set up a camera, signal us.

We would drive by.

Then they'd say stop and we'd stop, and they'd run and get back in the other vehicle and drive ahead to get another shot of us driving.

All those traveling shots took so much longer than it seems.

(upbeat music) - So what are we looking at here, Rich?

- Well, this is the entrance to The Sump.

And basically we're seeing the area where it drains out.

And you can see from the way some of these formations are, this is what's left behind as a result of erosion.

There's water, elements, wind, et cetera.

It kind of carved out.

And the reason that they're left behind is they're made out of a harder material, a harder stone.

Generally, these are like the remains of petrified tree stumps.

And over here, you can see it looks like a woodpile from a distance, but let's get up close.

And you can see it's wood colored rock.

- [Dave] These are rocks?

- [Rich] Yeah, these are rocks.

- [Chris] So now, is this petrified wood?

- Yeah, this is basically - I mean, was it once wood?

- like what, yeah, this is petrified wood.

You can see in some of them, some of the wood grain in it.

Look over there.

And we wanna walk up to this ridge.

- And of course, I have a piece of that stump, that little stone in my hand because I am such a rock hound.

I just can't help myself, sometimes.

Gotta pick up the rocks, gotta look at the rocks.

- [Rich] And it's kind of eroded down.

(soft music) - [Dave] How can such a place exist?

Well, the story behind it is really fascinating.

25 million years ago, this was part of an ancient lake known as Lake Esmeralda.

Runoff carried mud and other sediment into the Lake, and over the eons, it dried and hardened leaving behind it the multicolored landscape of today.

- [Chris] But that's not all, volcanoes sent ash into the air which then covered the crust.

Millions of years of geological upheaval, eruptions, and erosion from wind and water, then combined to create this mile and a 1/2 of natural sculpture.

Is this the tower that you see in the photos?

- [Rich] Yeah, this is the one you see in all the photographs, is this one right here.

- [Dave] That's the one I recognize.

- Yeah.

But yeah, this is one of those petrified tree stumps.

And you can see, it's probably the best example in The Sump.

You can see the wood at the top, and then the way that it's eroded down.

- I can totally remember what that area smelled like and what the texture of the dirt was, and it's kind of cool reliving it 'cause, it's not a trip I think of that often but it was really, really cool.

- [Rich] But you can see this is a pretty fragile place.

- Yeah.

- [Rich] It's kind of a clay material.

- [Dave] Even this, just feeling it, you can just feel the brittleness of it.

- [Rich] Exactly.

- [Dave] And it's so delicate.

You wanna leave it as it is.

- [Rich] Right.

- [Dave] It's great to look at though.

- [Rich] Yeah.

(calm music) - Does that look like a lamb's head to you?

It looks like a lamb's head to me.

- Yeah, kind of.

Or a dog face.

- [Dave] All right, it's kind of, yeah, I see the dog now too.

- Yeah.

- [Dave] Probably lots of different shapes in these hills.

(calm music) - The Sump was just a amazing space to be in.

It was magical.

I think Chris referred to it as otherworldly, and it was, as we walked among the petrified wood in the petrified trees up and around, and you can see how delicate that location was.

(calm music) - It's so delicate.

You know, you almost don't wanna touch it, but it just delicately touching it feels just like, it just feels like, just a big clump of sand, and if like I pushed it, it would come apart, but it won't.

It's solid, but it's like a huge sand painting, and the colors are so rich and they just smoothly form all around it.

It's like nothing you've ever seen before.

(calm music) - And part of me always wondered that when people see the show and watch the show and they try to, maybe go visit where we were, how many people did we draw there and did they respect the space as much as we did?

Because it's something that, the leave no trace.

Leave only footprints, take only pictures, kill only time.

That's that, leave no trace.

And in Nevada, you really need to follow that advice because it's such a special place.

(upbeat music) - [Chris] We returned to US 95 South and continued the 41 mile journey to our destination, Tonopah.

(upbeat music) - [Dave] In a short time, we were across the desert and heading up the last rise to Tonopah.

We've got a meal and some sleep ahead of us but we're all looking forward to seeing what tomorrow has in store.

- It's a chilly Tonopah morning but the sun is out and it should warm up nicely for our visit to the ghost town of Manhattan later today.

In fact, this mainframe comes from Manhattan, was brought down here to Tonopah years ago.

- Tonopah is about halfway between Reno and Las Vegas.

Now, it started out as a mining town and it's survived over a hundred years of boom and bust times.

A lot of that history still in town at the Tonopah Mining Park.

That is our first stop today.

Legend has it that Tonopah began because Jim Butler picked up a rock to throw at his wandering mule and was inspired to prospect here when he noticed the rich ore. Whatever the reason, Butler did prospect here and Tonopah grew as a result.

As the initial boom died, the town adjusted.

- The Mizpah now is functioning across the street.

The Belvada is now restored.

The feeling in Tonopah is different today from when we were there at the time.

- [Chris] Many of the vintage structures can still be seen and Tonopah remembers its origins by celebrating Jim Butler days every summer.

- Some businesses are gone.

Other businesses have opened.

They have a microbrewery, so it's worth visiting.

- [Chris] We meet Shawn Hall inside the visitor center and he takes us out into the park and back in time to visit a bit of local history.

- It was great to work with Shawn again and see him.

We'd worked with him in an earlier show that we went out to Belmont and we got caught in a snowstorm going out there.

And this with the mining museum, he really put together this great space to come and look at Nevada's mining history, and he is so knowledgeable with all of that.

- The Mizpah was the richest mine in the Tonopah district.

- On camera, off camera, he would just have story after story and factoid about Nevada mining.

I was amazed by how much he knew.

- What's interesting, we also have a number of wooden head frames on our property but they're all about the same time period.

But because this one was the richest of them, it was a little bit better for spending the money.

It was worth the money they spent.

- How much money did they pull out of the ground here?

- Actually, they pulled out almost as much as Virginia City, the Comstock Lode is not that far behind.

This is the Mizpah Hoist House.

This is pretty much where the heart of the operations of the Tonopah Mining District was.

We're very fortunate that we have all the original equipment still here.

It's very rare to actually see the hoisting equipment in place, because normally when a mine would shut down, first thing they would do is either yank it out and move it to another mining camp, or they would scrap it.

But here on our property, we actually have three complete sets of hoisting equipment.

- [Chris] Now is the park itself built on actual mines?

- Yes, this is all original.

Everything you see here is actually original, in place.

- Wow.

- This is the newest feature here at the mining park.

That's what we call the Stope Bridge.

Stopes are actually, basically open mines that ran laterally.

- Wow.

- [Shawn] This one is actually quite deep.

- As someone who always thought I was afraid of heights, this was one of those moments in the show where Jack was saying, "Go walk across that."

And you're thinking, "Can I do this?"

Maybe it's one of the reasons I'm not that much afraid of heights anymore.

It's an incredible feeling to be standing here and just staring.

- [Shawn] Well, it's sort of our museum thrill ride, in a sense.

It's awful fun watching tourists, 'cause they'll march out onto the bridge and then as soon as the bottom falls away, you know they kind of get off and then climb to the end.

- You do.

You kind of wanna hold on to the side.

- [Shawn] And it does give them a sense where they can see all the underground work.

- Cameras did a great job of showing you different angles and really give you a sense of the depth of that hole and how frightening it can be to stand over it and look down.

- This is the silver top mine.

This was actually one of the last ones that was used.

Pretty much mining finished here in Tonopah in 1948, and one of the last shipments came out of this mine.

What's kind of unique about this is that as we're approaching here, you'll see, it's what they call a grizzly.

It's an ore bin.

But this is actually where the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad would back up cars right underneath here to load up the ore. - Oh, that's what the chutes are coming out?

- Right.

So they just would back the cars in here and fill them up.

This is actually one of the most dangerous jobs of any of the mines here at the park, is the sorting bin, because they would actually have a crew up there.

The ore would come in on the cars and they look at it.

Bad ones would go out on the pile.

Good ones would go down in the shoot.

But the problem was is that the dust was very bad so that they had a lot of problem with silicosis, and so that actually, the expectancy of you being able to work in the sorting bin was about four to six months.

- [Chris] Oh, wow.

- You can see the size of the beams that they use to support this.

This is one of the very few that even exist in the state anymore, especially of this size.

(upbeat music) - [Chris] There's a real feeling that we're experiencing the mining district just as it existed a century ago.

The sheer size of the equipment is impressive.

You can almost hear the giant motors running.

When the mines were active, Tonopah roared with the constant sound.

(upbeat music) - I'm still in touch with Shawn Hall.

He's gone through some health issues and he's had a really hard time there for a while.

It sounds like he's getting better.

Things have improved.

So, if you're watching Shawn, we're thinking about you and we want you to come back and do more shows.

- [Chris] From Tonopah, we head five miles East on US six to the junction of State Route 376.

We used to get those driving shots in the minivan by literally opening that sliding door and somebody sitting in the back seat holding the camera.

(upbeat music) This Manhattan will never be confused with the one on the East coast, but it has its own unique charms.

This may have been one of the fastest growing towns of its day.

Gold was discovered here in 1905 and the rush was on.

In a period of two weeks in January of 1906, 4,000 people moved here.

Looking at the area today, it's hard to imagine what it looked like with that many residents.

Well, we made it to Manhattan.

- Oh yeah.

This is it.

The Big Apple.

- Yeah.

- You can see up there, the Manhattan Church.

That's the Church that was actually built in Belmont and was moved here in 1908.

- [Dave] Can we go take a look at it?

- [Rich] Yeah, we should.

Let's go up there.

- I actually know someone who got married in that Church in Manhattan years and years ago.

Not too long after we went to visit there, actually.

- [Rich] But there are a number of buildings left from the gold rush times.

At one point there were 13 mines and 16 plasters in operation.

Some of them with unusual names like Stray Dog, September Fraction, Whitecaps, and Litigation Hill Merger.

- I see the doors are open.

- Well, let's check it out.

(country music) - [Dave] I'd love to see this inside.

- [Rich] Yeah.

- [Chris] You know, you would think it was a ton of work to move a Church when it's this pretty, it's a shame though, - [Dave] Oh, yeah.

- to leave it somewhere.

- [Dave] It is open.

- Wow.

This is cool.

- Coolest Church.

- [Rich] This is great.

- If you search Rich Moreno in Nevada Magazine or Nevada online, you'll find articles that he wrote, and they're really interesting, really informative, and they'll inspire you to take a trip.

- [Chris] That's a neat bit of history.

You definitely wanna try to preserve it.

- Yeah.

Well, apparently the building was built in 1874, originally, and then it was moved in 1908 and it was a Catholic Church.

And now, like I said, it's not being used anymore but they've certainly tried to maintain it, stabilize it, allow people to use it.

(country music) And we were up on the high end of the town.

And the last thing we expected was this huge beer truck that came rumbling into town and could not film because the noise of the truck's engine was so loud that they basically blotted out our microphones.

And I always tell people about this, that this here we are in the middle of nowhere and a beer truck shows up.

Come on, man.

That can't, that's just unbelievable.

Well, this is the Nye & Ornsby County bank.

And it was built in 1906.

Apparently is one of the, or the only stone building that was ever, commercial building ever built in Manhattan.

And it was only used for one year.

And at the time that it was constructed it was one of the two largest banks in the State of Nevada.

So, it was obviously a pretty substantial structure.

- [Dave] Let's go in and take a look at this.

- Yeah, this looks great, this vault.

This great vault door.

(country music) - So this was the bank vault then.

- Yeah, this would, and then you can see, we can go around on the side later and go inside of it.

But yeah, this was the actual vault.

It doesn't open, I tried.

(laughing) But you can get inside the vault from one of the side doors.

You wanna go take a look?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Okay.

- Security, not so good anymore at that bank.

- Oh, what a great looking vault.

- Isn't this great?

The workmanship that you can see.

I mean, they really, I can't move this but they really spent some money to build this place.

- (indistinct) door.

- Yeah.

So wanna go inside?

- [Chris] Yeah.

- [Rich] As you can see here, the original safe is still inside.

Still says Nye & Ornsby County Bank and the door opens.

So you see these neat little touches.

- [Chris] I mean, just really nice finishes on everything.

- Oh, yeah, I mean, this is... - [Chris] You don't expect this in an abandoned building, especially one that's falling apart.

- [Rich] No, I mean, they obviously planned to be here a long time when they built this place.

- [Chris] A lot longer than a year anyway.

- [Rich] Yeah, exactly, so, and I'm surprised, I mean, that's almost a hundred years ago that this place has been empty, and that this is still all here and pretty much intact.

So it's pretty amazing.

- [Dave] The old timers were not too fond of banks in the early days.

One successful miner named Sam found his own alternative.

Sam had a jar full of gold dust and nuggets.

He buried hid treasure, then later he'd sit on his porch and tell friends that he could see where he hid his gold.

- We've heard buried treasure stories from ghost towns more than once in the course of "Wild Nevada."

There probably are jars of gold or coins or money buried in this state.

- Well, originally this was the original mine site where they found gold the very first time.

I believe in 1904 or three, whenever this town was originated.

They brought cattle in here from Belmont.

They camped here in the Camp Cook.

In the morning cleaning up, found residue of gold, and that's what started this town.

- Oh, one other thing, we had the helpful resident, and what was he holding in his hand?

Did you notice?

A beer can.

(country music) - [Chris] The abandoned structures and empty mine shafts among the sagebrush and junipers identify Manhattan as a ghost town.

But if you look closer, you can see the pulse of the community is still there, living on through a handful of residents who serve as gentle caretakers of their town's history and advocates for its future.

(country music) - There's always a bar, no matter how small the town is.

There's always a bar that is open.

They had two!

(country music) Well, we've seen a lot in the past couple of days and Rich, it seems like this trip mostly revolved around digging in the dirt either by men at Candelaria and Manhattan and Tonopah, or by nature in The Sump.

We really appreciate you, Rich Moreno, giving us this trip.

- Well, thanks very much for inviting me and letting me have a chance to show you some of my favorite places in Nevada.

Thanks.

- It's been a wonderful trip, Rich.

- Oh, yeah.

- [Chris] Thank you so much.

- Let's say we get ourselves a refreshment here.

- [Rich] Sure.

(Chris laughing) - We end at the bar (laughing).

So appropriate (laughing).

So now, we've ended a couple episodes at the bar (laughing).

- I hope you enjoyed watching it with us.

See you later.

(country music) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Support for "Wild Nevada Memories" is provided by the William N. Pennington Foundation.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Millie Hopper and Millard Reed.

- [Announcer] Gail and John Sande.

- [Announcer] Margaret and Charles Burback.

- [Announcer] And by individual members.

(upbeat music)