Nature Taking It All Back

The Rhyolite Cook Bank Building in its heyday. The original cost to build it was $90,000.00

Nature has a way of reclaiming its own. It takes time, but we think nature has plenty of that.

Cook Bank Building in the 1930s.

You see this happening across the American Southwest with all its ghost towns. Rhyolite, in Nevada, is one such ghost town.

Cook Bank Building early 1940s

The town began in 1905 as a mining camp. Gold was the big draw, and at one point 8,000 people populated the little town. By 1907, Rhyolite had running water, electrical lines, a newspaper, a hospital, a school, and even an opera house.

Cook Bank building 1948

But a reversal of fortune hit the town; the biggest mine dried up, and new investors weren't willing to throw more money into mining the area. By 1920, there was no one left.

The town, what was left of it, became a site for movies, and tourists came to see the remnants of the town and all its abandoned buildings.

Cook Bank Building today.

But eventually the buildings crumbled away or were scavenged for other uses, and today there is only a fraction to see of the original town.

The photos at right, from the Nevada Historical Society, show the decay of one of Rhyolite’s finest structures, the Cook Bank Building, over time.