Rhyolite is the reason many travelers pull off the highway at Beatty. Gold discoveries created a city here in the early 1900s, complete with banks, a school, a train station, and ambitious stone buildings. The boom collapsed quickly, and the desert has been working on the ruins ever since.
The Cook Bank shell is the classic photograph, but the Tom Kelly Bottle House and the scattered foundations are just as telling. The site is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is free to visit. Go early or late if you can; midday light and summer heat make the place harsher than it needs to be.