Called an audible and made a detour over to Rhyolite for a quick stop and chance for the kids to stretch their legs.
Tom Kelly’s Bottle House – Erected in 1906. Tom Kelly built the three room bottle house to raffle it off. The house served as a residence to the winning family for many years. Most recently, it was a curio shop.Las Vegas & Tonopah Depot – Erected in June 1909. One of three railroads that served Ryolite. The other two were the Tonopah Tidewater Railroad and the Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad.Cook Bank Building Ruins – Erected in January 1908. Cost $90,000 to build. Three stories plus a basement. The Post Office was in the basement, bank on the first floor, and business offices on the second and third floors. The building had electric lights, steam heating, and marble floors.Rhyolite School Ruins – Erected in 1909. Rhyolite’s second school, but by the time the building was completed, most of the students had already left Rhyolite because of the downturn.Ghost Rider (1984), Albert Szukalski – Constructed like the Last Supper, a local Beatty resident donated his effort and bicycle to the piece.Sit Here! (2000), Sofie Siegmann – Originally created for an artist-in-residence project facilitating kids at the Lied Discovery Children’s Museum in Las Vegas, the couch was rescued and relocated in 2007 where it continues to be restored and maintained.From a plaque nearby, “In different parts of the world you can find these puppets from Speeltheater Holland Studio. They are touched and altered by the elements: sun, rain, wind, snow, extreme heat or cold. That is on purpose. In every country the process of this decay is documented, either by artists or the audiences who visits them. After some years the puppets or remains will be removed and come together in an installation and travel to different musea. Our question to you: please make a selfie or group portrait with you and the puppets. Send it to {address omitted}. Your picture will probably get a place in the final installation. Thank, Ony Hulsink, see more about the project on www.speeltheater.nl.”The Museum began in 1984 with the creation and installation of a major sculpture by Belgian artist Albert Szukalski titled “The Last Supper” – a ghostly interpretation of Christ and his disciples sited against the backdrop o the expansive Amargosa Valley. To make the life-size ghost figures, Szukalski wrapped live models in fabric soaked in wet plaster and posed them as in the painting “The Last Supper” by Leonardo Da Vinci. When the plaster set, the model was slipped out, leaving the rigid shroud that surrounded him. With more refining, Szukalski then coated the figures with fiberglass making them impervious to weather.In subsequent years, additional pieces were added to the site y three other Belgian artists who, like Szukalski, were major figures in European art with extensive exhibition records, but who chose to create in relative obscurity in the Nevada desert near Death Valley in the early 1990s.Tribute to Shorty Harris (1994), Fred Bervoets – Shorty Harris was a legendary prospector in Rhyolite. His hopeful companion, a penguin, reflects the optimism of the miners’ endeavor.
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