Good Times in Goodsprings
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The new Fall/Winter 2026 Nevada Magazine arrived the other day. It’s a bi-monthly free subscription and considered a Visitor’s Guide, but for residents like us, it’s a great resource for finding new places to discover in the state, especially those within day-trip range. We’ve visited several suggested towns and sights, and we were looking for yet another. The current issue featured an article on Goodsprings, Nevada, a living ghost town less than an hour’s ride south from home. It sounded like a good Sunday afternoon outing.
We exited I-15 at Jean and headed onto Nevada SR-161 aka Goodsprings Road and followed it through typical arid, undeveloped Mojave Desert landscape to Goodsprings. At 7.277 (11.71km) miles long, SR-161 is one of the state’s shortest highways and abruptly ends on the west side of this tiny community.
With a current population of <300 residents, the town was founded in 1856 after the discovery of lead ore by Mormon miners in the Southern Spring Mountains, where they established the Potosi Mine, considered to be the oldest underground mine in Nevada. Subsequent findings of zinc and smaller deposits of gold, silver, and other minerals, along with the building of a railroad spur, the narrow-gauge Yellow Pine Railroad line, led to a peak population of ~800 residents during WWI.
We could see old mine workings in the hills as we headed into town. Motorcycles were lined up at the entrance to the Pioneer Saloon as we drove to the west end of town first for a bit of reconnaissance before heading to the historic saloon.
Pioneer Saloon - the oldest saloon in southern nevada
There are remnants of town’s mining history everywhere. Take a look.
The Pioneer Saloon is southern Nevada’s oldest saloon, opened in 1913. I was reminded that Clark Gable hung out in this bar for days in January 1942 after the plane carrying his wife, Carole Lombard, crashed in the nearby mountains, and he waited for the news. You can still see the heart-shaped patch of land on the mountainside where the plane went down.
Something I learned subsequent to our visit was that a commercially successful video game Fallout uses Goodsprings as the setting for its fictional town. According to Fallout Wiki, “Goodsprings is the tutorial town in Fallout: New Vegas, where the player’s journey begins, offering a mix of story beats, skill checks, and optional side quests before the main questline advances.”
Photo credit: Interplay Entertainment
From Wikipedia, “Fallout (also known as Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game) is a 1997 role-playing video game developed and published by Interplay Productions, set in a mid-22nd century post-apocalyptic and retro-futuristic world, decades after a global nuclear war led by the United States and China. Fallout's protagonist, the Vault Dweller, inhabits an underground nuclear shelter. The player must scour the surrounding wasteland for a computer chip that can fix the Vault's failed water supply system. They interact with other survivors, some of whom give them quests, and engage in turn-based combat.” Many of the town’s buildings and sites, including the Signal Gasoline Station and the Pioneer Saloon, are used when Fallout fans get together every year for Mojave Mayhem.
Inside, the saloon was dark and cool with a long wooden bar and a small dining room. The action, however, was not at the saloon, but rather out back on the covered patio where the Las Vegas-based Sand River Band was playing country-western tunes to the delight of about 100 people all seated at picnic tables, sipping beers, noshing on bar food, clapping, and singing along. Cowboy hats, leather boots, big belt buckles and jeans were the order of the day.
The Sand Hill River Band entertained an appreciative crowd
We ordered a beer and sat and listened for about an hour, thoroughly enjoying the music, the atmosphere, and the day. We checked the saloon’s upcoming schedule and noted several weekends when live bands would be playing, and decided we definitely needed to return sometime. I definitely won’t be during Mohave Mayhem week!
We decided to head back towards Las Vegas via Nevada SR-161 to check out the Seven Magic Mountains art installation standing boldly all by itself in the middle of the Mojave Desert. This free, large-scale desert artwork was created by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, and was opened to the public in 2016. We’ve passed by it several times, but never took the time to stop. This time we did.
The Seven Magic Mountains are definitely a surprise in the arid, tawny-brown Mojave Desert setting.
From the Seven Magic Mountains website: “Comprised of seven towers of colorful, stacked boulders standing more than thirty feet high, Seven Magic Mountains is situated within the Ivanpah Valley adjacent to Sheep Mountain and the McCullough, Bird Spring, and Goodsprings ranges of mountains. A creative expression of human presence in the desert, Seven Magic Mountains punctuates the Mojave with a poetic burst of form and color.”
The locally sourced limestone boulders are more than just a ‘burst of form and color’. They’re dazzling neon 30’ tall monoliths that jump out at you and shout humanity has been here and inserted itself into a dry, brown, arid desert. It’s pretty cool.
We jumped back onto I-15, then took the Blue Diamond exit for a quick lunch at Cottonwood Station in Blue Diamond, a cozy little place with casual indoor and outdoor seating and order-at-the-counter food. Blue Diamond, a small, old gypsum-mining company town sits at the base of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
We sat outdoors enjoying the rest of the day before heading back along NV-160 with great views of Red Rocks and Calico Mountains.
The Calico Mountains in Red Rock National Recreation area with Joshua trees in the foreground
A fine Sunday afternoon, discovering yet another interesting place to visit in Nevada.
Next time, David and Brennan take off for a mountain hike, and Marcie has some ‘me’ time! Yikes… what will I ever do?