This Nevada Ghost Town Is The Bottle House Capital Of The World
Rhyolite is a ghost town located in Nye County, approximately 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Founded in 1905 as a mining camp after gold was discovered in Bullfrog Hills, Rhyolite declined nearly as quickly as it rose, and by 1920 the town was well on its way to becoming the ghost town it is today. During its heyday, local Tom Kelly constructed a bottle house that became the talk of the town. Since then, two other bottle houses—and a number of smaller ones—sprang up in Rhyolite. They still stand today.
Kelly came to Rhyolite in 1905 and decided to build a house. Since the only available lumber at the time was from the Joshua tree, Kelly decided to use bottles.
Kelly collected 51,000 bottles from the 50 saloons in the area in fewer than six months to build his three-bedroom house complete with porch and trim. The bottles were secured with adobe mud.
Since Kelly was nearly 80 years old, he chose to raffle his talked-about bottle house for $5 per ticket. The house was won by the Bennet family who resided in the home until 1914.
In 1925, the house received a face lift with a new roof for two movies Paramount Pictures was shooting. Both "The Airmail" and "Wanderers of the Wasteland" were shot in Rhyolite and featured the bottle house.
The bottle house's final tenants were Tommy Thompson and his eight children who lived there until 1969. They are responsible for the variety of small bottle houses scattered across the property.
