Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park

Six 30-foot-tall stone beehives stand abandoned in a pinyon flat about 20 miles south of Ely. The Ward Charcoal Ovens were built in 1876 to produce charcoal for the silver smelters of the long-vanished town of Ward, eight miles further on. The ovens themselves survived because the local stone is unusually durable — the structures stand today essentially as they were left when the smelters shut down in 1888.

The state park has minimal infrastructure: a small information board, primitive campsites, and trails along Willow Creek leading up into the Egan Range. The ovens are the obvious attraction — strange, beautiful, and unlike anything else in eastern Nevada. Free; usually deserted; the road in is gravel but well-maintained.

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A story
The ovens were built around 1876 by Italian charcoal-makers brought from the Piedmont, where this beehive design had been used for centuries. They burned for a decade before the silver smelters of Ward — and the town itself — went bust in 1888. The ovens were briefly used in the 1880s as a hideout by stagecoach bandits and once sheltered a snowbound prospector for three days.

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