Why US-93 Through Nevada Beats Every Desert Drive You've Tried

You drive US-93 for the space. Between Wickenburg and Wells, you'll cover 500 miles through Nevada's basin-and-range country, where mountain ridges run north-south like ribs and valleys stretch fifteen miles wide. Traffic thins to maybe six cars per hour once you pass Kingman. Cell service drops out for hundred-mile gaps. You see the curve of the earth.

Stop first in Chloride, Arizona, three miles off the highway on a paved side road. This mining town peaked in the 1920s at 5,000 people. Now about 250 live here year-round. The Yesterday's Restaurant (cash only) opens Friday through Sunday and serves chili that comes in a bowl the size of a mixing basin. Park on Tennessee Avenue. Walk the hilltop cemetery where headstones date to 1863.

Past the Nevada line, Caliente appears after an hour of nothing. The Knotty Pine Motel rents rooms for $65 and hasn't updated the bedspreads since Carter's administration, but the water pressure works and the couple who run it will tell you exactly where to find petroglyphs in Rainbow Canyon. Grab breakfast at the J&J Ranch Market deli counter. Their breakfast burrito costs $4.50 and requires two hands.

Between Caliente and Pioche, pull off at Oak Springs Summit. The view opens across three valleys stacked one behind another, mountains fading to blue shadows. You won't see another person. I ate lunch there on the tailgate in October and counted four vehicles in ninety minutes.

Fill your tank in Pioche. The next reliable gas station sits 100 miles north in Ely. Pioche itself hangs on the side of a canyon, its Main Street climbing so steeply that early miners installed stairs between buildings. The Thompson Opera House still stands downtown, built in 1880, now serving as a community center.

Past Ely, the highway crosses the Schell Creek Range at Sacramento Pass, elevation 7,154 feet. In May, snowmelt runs across the road. By August, the aspens in the high valleys turn that particular yellow-green that photographs never capture right. You drop into Spring Valley, thirty miles of absolutely flat basin floor where ranches sit five miles apart and mailboxes perch on posts tall enough to clear snowdrifts.

Pack water. Bring snacks. Download maps before you lose service. The drive takes eight hours without stops, twelve if you explore. Go in spring or fall when temperatures stay reasonable. Summer turns the basins into convection ovens.