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Desert

7 stories
A ruined masonry facade standing alone in the desert, a figure in its doorway, in black and white
History

The decade-long boom of Rhyolite, Nevada

Shorty Harris and Ed Cross found gold in the Bullfrog Hills in 1904; the town that followed had a decade of life.
A long low shed with a curved roof across dry grassland, a dirt track leading to it
History

What Chinati Did to Marfa

In the high desert of West Texas, a minimalist art foundation turned a shrinking ranching town into a destination.
Weathered wooden buildings of a ghost town standing in summer grass, a wagon wheel in front
History

What the Wind Keeps at Bodie

In the high country east of the Sierra, a gold town from the 1870s still stands, held upright by wind, snow, and the policy of arrested decay.
A passenger train running along the base of eroded desert bluffs
Landscapes

The Green River Melon Fields

Where the Utah desert meets the Green River, irrigated fields grow a crop the red country has no right to permit.
The Extraterrestrial Highway sign, thick with stickers, beside an empty desert road
On the Road

Rachel, Nevada, Where the Silence Runs Deep

On the Extraterrestrial Highway the desert outlasts every story, and the smallest town in the basin holds its ground.
A dirt two-track running through sagebrush toward a red rock mesa
Landscapes

What the High Desert Does to Your Sense of Time

Six weeks at seven thousand feet, where the light is the only clock that matters.
The long adobe portal of the Palace of the Governors, with people walking beneath it
On the Road

Santa Fe in the Off-Season

The galleries thin out, the light goes long and gold, and the town returns to the people who live in it.