JARBRIDGE, Nev. — I let random chance, in the form of various strange games of my design, decide where each month's Max Tracks takes me, and this month random chance let me see a place my dad has been telling me about for years.
It's a tiny town in Northern Nevada called Jarbidge.
Town residents claim it's the most remote town in the lower 48 states, and I wouldn't argue.
There are just two roads in. One is closed by snow until July, and when it opens you need a four-wheel drive to access the town. The better dirt road (yep, no pavement from north or south) takes you through Idaho.
The freeway from Salt Lake City to Twin Falls, Idaho is a smooth 220 miles and takes about three hours. The next 90 miles starts on two-lane state roads that become gravel, and then dirt and takes about another three hours.
There's an occasional sign, but the existence of Jarbidge starts to feel like an elaborate prank until you see The Trading Post through the pines.
"There's a lot of people when they're driving down the road, they think they're not going to end up here," said Jase Stegall, "They panic and turn around and go back."
Stegall owns the Outdoor Inn with it's bar, cafe, and gift shop, and the Red Barn Motel down the street. He's about to turn 50 and says, among Jarbidge's 15 full-time residents, he's about fifth-youngest.
"A bad day living in Jarbidge is better than a good day living in any city," Stegall told me.
I arrived in Jarbidge on a good day. The town was celebrating Jarbidge Days, an annual event featuring a parade, a beer crawl, and a poker crawl. It raises money to maintain the town's sturdy, barn-like community hall with a history reaching back to its Gold Rush days.
Accounts from the Nevada Historical Quarterly suggest hopeful prospectors rushed into the town in between 1909 and 1910, and rushed out just as quickly.
Turns out America's last Gold Rush was more rush than gold.
So Jarbidge wasn't the next San Francisco, but the people living in it's gorgeous, remote setting don't want it to be.
They have all they need.
"There's always 91 octane ethanol free fuel and diesel. There's a motel, store, and the post office is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday," Stegall explained.
It's no mystery why the residents pointed me to Stegall as he's a one-man Chamber of Commerce.
As for making money, every person I approached was a regular visitor.
Stryker was in town with her mom and dad, saying, "It's really fun because of the parade and we go camping." Her mom, Lindsay, added, "It's beautiful up here. It's a nice getaway from the desert."
Up the street from Stegall's Inn you'll find Nevada Glassworks, a refined little operation run by Danny Sullivan, who showed me his showroom and workshop, which are the same place laid out in what I chose to call Rustic-Nevada-Feng-Shui-Chic.
Sullivan makes beautiful torch-formed sculptures, and his specialty fits the town's Gold Rush roots. They are bowls fused with his own designs and shaped in antique gold pans.
"I've lived in Hood River, Oregon, doing windsurfing, and worked at Snowbird for 11 years, doing the whole ski industry thing," Sullivan said.
The glass artisan says northern Nevada is the best place to fish he's ever been, and his shop makes more money in Jarbidge than it's previous location in the big city, which in this case is Elko, Nevada.
"I make a go of it here," he said.
In fact, Sullivan said business in Jarbidge is good enough that he doesn't have the inventory to sell online.
So Jarbidge and its 15 residents draw visitors with their charm, but the mountains around it hold a mystery and, perhaps, a sixteenth resident. The Shoshone told the early prospectors a giant cannibal roamed the mountains above their settlement.
The name of the monster? Tsawhawbitts. Somehow the new arrivals translated "Tsawbawbitts" into "Jarbidge," and a town was born.
