1909

Businessman David Eldridge and self-described “desert rat,” Malapai Mike, traveled 40 miles across Death Valley in California to investigate a proposed power site for the Brockington Company in Boston, Massachusetts.

On their return, they got lost in what seemed to be a sinkhole. In the oppressive heat, they grew exhausted and dehydrated, and one of their two burros died.

They tossed a silver dollar to determine who’d take the remaining burro and try to get to safety. Eldridge lost.

The men divvied up the water, 1 quart for Mike, 4 quarts for Eldridge. Then Mike left.

He made it to civilization and safety despite the second burro also giving out. Hollow-eyed and emaciated, he told authorities the tale of his having abandoned his companion and his harrowing escape.

Eldridge, who subsequently couldn’t be found, was presumed dead.

Rhyolite, Nevada in the 1920s

1908

Johnny-Behind-the-Gat bet more than he should’ve.

He was a prospector and miner said to have little common sense, a big temper and a penchant for using his weapon to solve disputes.

John Cyty (his real name), in a 12-hour roulette game, bet and lost $75,000 worth of shares (a roughly $2 million value today) of his company, the Big Bell Mine Co. in Death Valley, California. In doing so, he ceded control of the business to C.E. Jones, the owner of the Stock Exchange gambling rooms in Rhyolite, Nevada, just across the border from the mine.

Photo from Utah State University’s Special Collections, Merrill-Cazier Library

1937-1947

The bustle and liveliness of the Ghost Casino have long been dead. All that remains is a specter of the club’s former self in the form of a rundown, abandoned building — a state befitting its home, the now desolate ruins of Rhyolite, Nevada.

Situated in the desert about 120 miles north of Las Vegas, the gambling enterprise began as a railroad depot erected during Rhyolite’s short-lived boom between 1906 and 1911. Named after the igneous rock prevalent there, the town had boomed after prospectors discovered gold nearby. Once the rumor had spread that the precious metal in the region had been exhausted, all but a few residents had deserted Rhyolite.

Nearly three decades later, in 1937, a Las Vegas saloon owner, Norman C. Westmoreland purchased the entire ghost town at a bankruptcy auction. He sank $15,000 (about $250,000 today) into remodeling it into a nightclub and casino, which he named Ghost Casino. Open only during winters, it became a gambling hot spot for visitors from California’s Death Valley.

It “became famous all over the country and was a noted tourist attraction,” the Nevada State Journal noted (May 27, 1947).

Westmoreland ran the Ghost Casino for 10 years until he grew ill and tried to sell it. There weren’t any takers and he died, so his sister, H.H. Heisler, maintained the place as a museum and gift shop into the 1970s. Today, it’s shuttered and fenced in.

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