America’s loneliest road across Nevada’s back-country isn’t for the faint of heart, and now travelers can also take a small detour to visit a real-life ghost town. Known as “The Town That Refused To Die,” Ione got its start in 1863 — a year before Nevada became a state — as a trade and milling center after a silver strike in the nearby Shoshone Mountains. By 1864, more than 600 people had taken up residence, and Ione had become the county seat of Nye County. Soon, the town had a courthouse, a post office, two newspapers, a stable, a drugstore, a stagecoach line, and several stores, restaurants and saloons. The good fortune didn’t last, and by 1867 much of the population had taken off for more prosperous towns. A fire destroyed many of Ione’s buildings in 1887, and eventually all the nearby mines and mills closed. In 1959, the post office closed and all but one of the businesses — a market — shuttered. Ione wasn’t quite dead yet, though, and in the 1980s, a company called Marshall Earth Resources, Inc. revitalized it once more, establishing a gold mining operation nearby. Those efforts also proved short-lived, and today just 2 residents live in the town year-round — Jonathan Harp, 80, and his wife Norma. While 8 families still own property in the ghost town, the Harps and their Great Dane Duke are the only ones to call the town home. For supplies and groceries, the couple drives to Fallon, a small city about 100 miles away, once a week. Though living in Ione is tough and could be lonely for some, the Harps say they can't imagine living anywhere else.
