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Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad
The Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad was a standard-gauge desert railroad built during Nevada's early twentieth-century gold boom. Despite its name, it never reached Tonopah. Instead, it ran northwest from Las Vegas through the Bullfrog district to Goldfield, where it connected with railroads serving Tonopah and central Nevada.
William A. Clark incorporated the railroad on September 22, 1905. It was built as a 198-mile extension of Clark's San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad system, giving Las Vegas a direct rail connection to the mining districts at Beatty, Rhyolite, Bullfrog, and Goldfield.
The Las Vegas & Tonopah was one of four railroads competing for traffic from the Tonopah, Goldfield, and Bullfrog-Rhyolite mining districts. Its principal rivals were the Tonopah & Goldfield, Bullfrog & Goldfield, and Tonopah & Tidewater railroads. Clark had earlier made a tentative agreement with Francis Marion "Borax" Smith for a line from Las Vegas toward Smith's Lila C borax mine near Death Valley Junction. When that agreement failed, Clark and Smith became competitors in a race to reach the Bullfrog district. The Las Vegas & Tonopah eventually connected or interchanged with the Bullfrog & Goldfield, Tonopah & Goldfield, and Tonopah & Tidewater systems.
Clark's engineers surveyed the route early in 1905, and construction began the following year. Track reached Indian Springs on March 1, 1906, and Gold Center, south of Beatty, in October. The railroad entered Rhyolite in December 1906. From there it crossed the difficult country west and north of Rhyolite, including the grades near the Original Bullfrog Mine, then continued through Bonnie Claire toward Goldfield. The final spike was driven at Goldfield on October 26, 1907, and the railroad entered regular operation the following month.
Las Vegas & Tonopah RR
The line carried mining machinery, lumber, fuel, ore, mail, passengers, and general freight. Its route served Corn Creek, Indian Springs, Amargosa, Rose's Well, Beatty, Rhyolite, Bonnie Claire, and smaller rail points on the way to Goldfield. Rhyolite became an important division point, with yards, engine facilities, and the substantial passenger depot that still stands.
The railroad shared the weakness of many mining lines: construction costs were permanent, but boomtown traffic was not. Its route through the Bullfrog Hills required difficult grades and high operating costs. Meanwhile, competing railroads provided shorter or less expensive connections to California markets. The mines produced less ore than promoters had expected, and freight and passenger traffic declined.
In 1914, the Las Vegas & Tonopah combined operations with the Bullfrog & Goldfield Railroad. Redundant sections were removed, including much of the Las Vegas & Tonopah's costly high line through the Bullfrog district. Service continued over the consolidated system, but the railroad's traffic never recovered. Daily trains ended on February 1, 1917, and service was reduced to three trains each week.
The last train ran on October 31, 1918. The railroad was abandoned and its rails were removed for scrap. Parts of its former right-of-way later became part of the U.S. Highway 95 corridor. Although it operated for little more than a decade, the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad remains an important example of the mining railroads that briefly linked the Mojave and southern Great Basin to Nevada's great gold camps.
References
Myrick, David F. Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California, Volume 2: The Southern Roads. University of California Press, 1963.Wilkerson, Gregg, and Larry M. Vredenburgh. "Railroads and Mining in the Mojave Desert and Southwestern Great Basin, California and Nevada." Desert Symposium, 2024.
Greene, Linda W., and John A. Latschar. A History of Mining in Death Valley National Monument. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1981.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections. Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad Blueprints.
Tonopah
Goldfield
Rhyolite
Las Vegas
Beatty
Rhyolite
Ludlow
Southern Pacific
Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad
"Borax" Smith
Senator Wm. A. Clark
