Our fourth day in the desert was a half day since we had to get to Vegas. We headed out of the park to the east, towards Searchlight, and took a quick detour to the Hart Townsite just outside of the park boundary. Hart was a small town of about 400 gold miners, and there is very little left. From a monument at the townsite:
“Gold was discovered in the nearby Castle Mountains in December 1907 by Jim Hart and the Hitt Brothers, Bert and Clark. The town of Hart quickly sprang up. Its five hotels and eight saloons served a population of about 400. The relatively quiet town had neither a church or a school. Hart had its own newspaper during 1908-1909. The nearest rail connection was 3 1/2 miles northwest at the siding of Hitt. The mines played out after ten years and the town was deserted.”
After exploring the ruins we headed towards Vegas, with one more detour. This next stop was off of 95 at a small BLM site called Keyhole Canyon. It’s a nice collection of petroglyphs and a few pictographs. Its accessibility means there is a bit more vandalism than some of the other remote sites I’ve visited, but it was still a nice collection.
