Rhyolite and the Goldwell Open Air Museum

A few miles from Beatty and spitting distance from Death Valley lies the ghost town of Rhyolite. A hundred years have stripped the meat from the bones of this mining boom town, and now the few walls that stand attract a steady trickle of curious visitors. The most preserved and interesting site is the Bottle House, a small structure chiefly composed of 50,000 glass bottles, demonstrating a strong streak of junkyard ingenuity that you’ll see all over these desert parts. Self-reliance is a central tenet of the Burning Man ethos, and the Bottle House, built by Tom Kelley, presaged this festival doctrine.
Standing slightly apart from the Rhyolite ruins are a gathering of shrouded figures. Approach and you’ll see that the illusion of personage is created by the negative space around a plaster “shroud.” This is the central piece of the Goldwell Open Air Museum, an impressive, ominous, and beautiful sight in the last moments of sunset. Art dominates the environment at Burning Man, and encountering art “where it shouldn’t be,” in the middle of a desert, is a fundamental aspect of the experience both there and here in Goldwell.