Tonopah, Nevada

After an overnight stay near Reno, we arrived in Tonopah, Nevada.

Why Tonopah, you ask?  Besides being about halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, Tonopah was also the focus of a TV series we watched a year or so ago called Turquoise Fever.

From the INSP website:

For the Otteson Family, Working Together Is a Blast—Literally!

Get ready for explosions (We’re talking actual dynamite!), drilling, drama, danger, tears, tense business deals, laughter, and the love of a tight-knit family who risk their lives daily to find the motherlode of precious turquoise.

That’s right, all that glitters is not gold. The bling is blue, and this family knows how to find it.

In INSP’s new docuseries, Turquoise Fever,  you’ll meet the Ottesons: Donna, Danny, Tommy, and their extended family, who for 60 years, and three generations, have been mining the precious blue stone in remote desert areas around Tonopah, Nevada. Their claims produce some of the most valuable turquoise in the world, some stones worth more than gold. 

It was a fascinating show but for some reason, it only survived one season and never made it back to our TV screen.  So we decided to plan a stop in Tonopah to see what we could learn.

We checked into a small RV park and with 18 sites in what was essentially a gravel parking lot on the side of the highway, we weren't expecting much.  But we were pleasantly surprised when we pulled into site #18.

Being on the end of a row is always a bonus

We made reservations for two nights so that we had a chance to explore the town.  So the next morning we ventured in.

We had the address to the Otteson store so that was our first destination.  Unfortunately, what we drove to was a residential address - was this the store?  Or maybe their house?  We figured out it wasn't the store so I refrained from taking a picture.  Come on, I'm not that big of a stalker.

Nearby was the Mining Park so we parked and went inside.

We spent some time talking with the "expert" and learned that while the Otteson family mined in Tonopah, they didn't sell turquoise in Tonopah.  But we spent a little time in the museum anyway.

Silver Ore

We then went to a local shop to see what turquoise they had.

While we were there, a couple was visiting and it was fascinating to listen to the stories they shared with the shop owner.  They live in the middle of 645,000 acres and are 60 miles from anything!  After they left the shop owner told us that they come into town once a week and spend the day taking care of "business".  While we like living on property, that's more than a little too much for us.

There wasn't much in the way of turquoise but we did find a few interesting things to take home with us.

It's hard to appreciate the color of this stone but it's spiny oyster which is typically a beautiful orange.  This is purple with some yellow/gold in it.

Since there wasn't any "Otteson" turquoise made into jewelry, we focused on the turquoise stones that came from the Royston Mine which is owned by the Ottesons.  At some point we'll have them made into pieces of jewelry.

By then it was lunch time so, of course, we had to try a local place.  Honestly, the only "chain" type restaurant we saw was Burger King and we weren't up for that.  We'd seen a lot of signs along the highway for Tonopah Station so we gave it a try.

All decked out for Halloween

And that was all to see in Tonopah.  What a funky little town and as my grandmother would have said, "I couldn't give it much".