Nevada’s landscape is stitched with the bones of boomtowns; mining camps, railroad stops, and hopeful homesteads that sprang up overnight and faded just as fast. If you love wide skies, old brickwork, and the storytelling that happens when you stand where history happened, Northern Nevada has excellent, and surprisingly accessible, ghost towns to explore. Below are a few that are easy to reach in Northern Nevada, a short history for each, and practical ways to enjoy them using Leave No Trace ethics and the rules that protect our shared heritage.
Tuscarora | A Stubborn Survivor
Tuscarora sits in Elko County and began after word of a gold strike in 1867. At one point during its 19th-century boom it supported thousands of miners, mills, and businesses; later cycles of activity and quiet left the town with the weathered wooden buildings and mill ruins you can still see today. Although it slowed from a true boomtown, Tuscarora never completely disappeared, there’s still a small living community nearby and lots of visible historic fabric to imagine life here in the 1800s.
Metropolis | The Agricultural Experiment that Failed
Metropolis (near Wells) is not a mining boomtown so much as a failed agricultural colony. Founded in 1910 by a reclamation company that hoped dry-land farming would succeed here, the town grew infrastructure (school, hotel, store) but the climate and economics didn’t cooperate. By the 1920s most settlers left; today you’ll find the ruins of the school, hotel foundations, and a small cemetery.
Ruby Hill | The Mining Camp Near Eureka
Ruby Hill grew up in the 1870s around rich silver and lead strikes near Eureka. The boom peaked in the late 1870s; later revivals occurred but natural events (like a 1910 storm that washed out a railroad) and the usual market swings led to decline. Today Ruby Hill’s remains sit close to Eureka and give a vivid sense of the mining economy that powered much of Nevada’s early development.
Belmont — Classic 1860s Silver Era
Belmont (south of Tonopah regionally, often included in central/northern Nevada routes) was a silver boomtown whose discoveries helped shape Nevada’s reputation in the 1860s and 1870s. Brick archways, graveyards, and the old saloon ruins make it one of Nevada’s more photogenic ghost towns, and you can still feel the scale of that 19th-century boom walking the historic center.