Ralph Crouse’s signature inside the Belmont Courthouse. Photo by Joyce Hollister.It was strange to see the signature of an old cowboy we’d known years ago scrawled across the faded blue wall. “Ralph Crouse, Tonopah” was etched into the plaster in letters nearly a foot high. We wished Ralph had dated it, as so many of the nearby names had been.
The thought crossed my mind: When does signing the wall on a state monument become vandalism, and when is it historical graffiti?
But I am ahead of myself.
Pulling out of Tonopah one August morning, we headed east on U.S. 6, then north on State Route 376 toward Big Smoky Valley. Our destination was Manhattan, a typical old Nevada mining town liberally laced with brick ruins and dead vehicles. The surprise was that the town is alive with folks who work the area’s modern mines.
Bank vault and rotting floor inside the Nye & Ormsby County Bank in Manhattan. Photo by Joyce Hollister.For every hollow building there is a nicely kept home with trees, flowers and a satellite dish. The ruins are what interest most tourists: an ornate vault sits inside the crumbling Nye and Ormsby County Bank, for example, and on the hill above town stands the often-photographed Manhattan Catholic Church.
There are services of sorts. The Manhattan Bar’s slogan is “Wet Goods for Dry People.” Next door is the recently constructed Manhattan Motel. The Manhattan Volunteer Fire House lies adjacent to a public park.
Bank vault and rotting floor inside the Nye & Ormsby County Bank in Manhattan. Photo by Joyce Hollister.During a trip Gim, my husband, took earlier this summer, he and his brothers-in-law had spent a pleasant hour at the bar before heading to Belmont. We were following the same route of their trip, but since it was too early in the morning for bar stopping, we strolled through town and took photos instead.
The Belmont Courthouse served Nye County from 1876 to 1905. Photo by Joyce Hollister.The road out of Manhattan to Belmont is well-maintained gravel, as were all the routes we took through Monitor Valley and back over the Toquima Range a day later. Our trusty Toyota Corolla didn’t waiver, and even though most locals recommend carrying two spares, we only had one—and didn’t need it on the 12 miles to Belmont.
Abandoned firetruck rusts across the street from the Belmont Inn. Photo by Joyce Hollister.This former mining town has its share of ruins and rusted vehicles, but it also has the Belmont Bed and Breakfast Inn, Dirty Dick’s Saloon (open summer weekends), horseshoe pits that anyone can play on (please return the horseshoes to their proper place) and the Belmont Courthouse, now a Nevada state historic park. With around a dozen residents most of the year, Belmont almost qualifies as a ghost town. Lots of Tonopah folks have family homes in Belmont and stay here in the summer, some on weekends and others for the season. Everyone gets together for a July 4th parade and barbecue.
John Terras gives a tour of the Belmont Courthouse interior. Photo by Joyce Hollister.We stopped to say hi to Suzie Terras, who operates Suzie’s Attic gift shop next to the Terras family home. Her husband, John, is a member of a newly formed citizens’ committee that hopes to restore the courthouse interior and open it for tours. He asked us if we’d like to go inside. Need he ask?
The four-floor brick building housed Nye County offices from 1876 to 1905, when the county seat was moved to Tonopah. The courthouse has a floor plan similar to many courthouses in Nevada, with the sheriff’s, recorder’s, and other offices on the main floor and the courtroom on the second floor. John also showed us the huge attic area that probably was used for storage and pointed out the stairway to the cupola.
Broken walls reveal the lath and plaster construction of the Belmont Courthouse interior. Photo by Joyce Hollister.The roof and windows had been repaired with a state grant some years before, but there weren’t enough funds to restore inside. Over the years of disuse, the lath and plaster ceilings and walls fell apart, but considering the place was abandoned more than 100 years ago, it seems to be in remarkably good shape.
I could see a faint tinge of the blue paint on many of the walls, but everywhere were signatures—graffiti, if you will—dating from the 1920s to the 1970s. There were names of kids from the ’30s, surveyors and servicemen from the ’40s and visitors from local towns—including Ralph Crouse of Tonopah, whom we knew as a law-abiding citizen of our hometown of Genoa—from all 50 years. George Vucanovich (a local lad, John said) signed his name in huge sweeping cursive letters on two walls, I guess so no one would miss the fact that he was there. There were no obscenities that I could see.
John said apparently the courthouse was unlocked for all that time. Until Nye County deeded the courthouse to state parks in 1974, entering the building and signing your name on a wall was the thing to do.
A wall in the rear of the courthouse was knocked down to remove the jail cells. The iron cells were used in Austin for a time. Photo by Joyce Hollister.Restoring the courtroom and the offices will give visitors a sense of what life was like in 19th-century Belmont. I imagined the courtroom with a mahogany bench and jury box and rows of seats for spectators; the center staircase with a carved handrail; the clerk’s office with a desk and file drawers. As he let us out the door, John conceded that he and his fellow committee members have a big job raising funds.
It wasn’t until later that I wondered about the fate of the graffiti. Seems a pity to cover up George’s and Ralph’s signatures. They were part of Belmont’s history, too.
Our next stop was Pine Creek Campground, operated by the U.S. Forest Service in the Alta Toquima Wilderness. In Monitor Valley we would visit Diana’s Punch Bowl and soak in Potts Ranch Hot Springs. More on these delights coming up…
If you are in the area:
Manhattan
http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/nv/manhatten.html
Belmont
http://parks.nv.gov/bc.htm
Tonopah
http://www.tonopahnevada.com/
Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Alta Toquima Wilderness
http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/htnf/recreation/wilderness/alta_toquima.shtml
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