Pioche on Foot
Seven stops along one steep Nevada main street, in a town that was once too violent to bury its dead anywhere but Boot Hill, and which built a courthouse so expensive it took eighty years to pay off.
7 stops · on foot · Nevada · 20 minutes of walking, end to end
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Every one of the 7 places in the index. Plan a route and the map narrows to what's actually near it.
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Pioche sits at six thousand feet in eastern Nevada with about a thousand residents, and nearly everything worth seeing is on one street or visible from it. Silver was found here in the 1860s; by the early 1870s it was one of the roughest camps in the West, and the buildings that survive were all put up by people who expected the money to last.
Two theatres sharing a wall
Start at the Overland, which is a working hotel and saloon and the easiest place to leave a car.
A minute north are Thompson's Opera House and the Gem Theater, and these two are worth slowing down for. They are separate buildings, put up sixty years apart, standing shoulder to shoulder at 644 and 648 Main. The wooden one went up in 1873 as Brown's Hall. In the 1930s it was renamed the Gem. Then in 1937 somebody built a purpose-made brick cinema on the plot next door, took the name Gem with it, and the older building went back to being Thompson's.
So the name has been on both buildings, at different times, and every list of Pioche's historic structures has to say which one it means. The opera house opens by arrangement; the cinema has been closed since 2002 and is worth looking at from the pavement.
The courthouse that ate the county
The Million Dollar Courthouse is the story everybody tells about Pioche and it is true. The 1872 building was meant to cost around twenty-six thousand dollars. Refinanced, re-refinanced, and compounded by a county that kept putting the problem off, the debt reached nearly a million by the time it was finally cleared — in 1938, by which point the building had been condemned and abandoned for six years.
Up the hill
The Lincoln County Historical Museum collects what the scattered ghost towns of the county left behind. Above it, the aerial tramway still crosses the hillside with ore buckets hanging from the cables, which is not a reconstruction and not a monument — it is just still there.
Boot Hill
The last stretch is the steepest, and the point of the walk.
Boot Hill holds the men who died in Pioche's first years. The town's claim is that seventy-two people were buried here before anybody died of natural causes. Like most such claims it has been repeated more often than it has been checked, but the graves are real and the markers are plain, and the difference between reading that and standing in it is the reason to come.
Practical
About a mile end to end, uphill on the return, at six thousand feet. Allow an afternoon rather than the twenty minutes of actual walking — the museum and the courthouse are where the time goes.
The Overland and the courthouse keep regular hours. Thompson's opens by arrangement rather than on a schedule, so ring ahead if getting inside matters to you. The tramway and the Gem are outdoor looking, any time.
The Route
Overland Hotel & Saloon
Pioche, Nevada
A historic Pioche hotel and saloon trades heavily on local ghost stories while preserving the atmosphere of the old mining camp.
Thompson’s Opera House
Pioche, Nevada
An 1870s theater survives on Pioche’s main street and still hosts occasional events, making it a rare remnant of entertainment in a remote mining boomtown.
Historic Gem Theater
Pioche, Nevada
The small early movie house is a remarkably intact piece of Pioche’s 20th-century streetscape; restoration status can change, so exterior viewing is the reliable stop.
Million Dollar Courthouse
Pioche, Nevada
This ornate 1872 courthouse became notorious for the extraordinary debt created by construction bonds, eventually costing taxpayers far more than its original price.
Lincoln County Historical Museum
Pioche, Nevada
A small museum collects mining equipment, household objects, photographs, and frontier material from Pioche and Lincoln County’s scattered ghost towns.
Pioche Aerial Tramway
Pioche, Nevada
Remnants of an old aerial ore tramway still cross the hills and historic district, leaving suspended buckets and cables above parts of town.
Pioche Boot Hill Cemetery
Pioche, Nevada
Boot Hill preserves graves from Pioche’s violent mining years, including markers tied to gunfights and the town’s reputation for frontier lawlessness.