Tiny McGill, 128 miles south of I-80 and 12 miles north of Ely, is the classic Nevada company town, its workaday life revolving for the first 50 years of the 20th century around a giant copper smelter. Mining company officials lived in the fancy houses around the “Circle” at the top of the hill just below the factory, while workers were housed according to their ethnic origins. The saloon and jail were conveniently built right next door to each other, and steam from the copper furnaces was piped to heat the town’s houses. The company’s been gone for more than 15 years, but the layout remains, along with acres of fenced-off brick factory buildings painted with fading signs encouraging workers to behave safely.

  A few of McGill’s buildings have been converted to current uses, but most are closed and quite forlorn. US-93, which runs at the foot of town, attracts most of the businesses, including a Frosty stand (for burgers and shakes) and the McGill Club, right on US-93 down the street in the old Cyprus Hall. “The Oldest Back Bar in the State,” the latter is considered one of Nevada’s finest by connoisseurs of Silver State–licensed establishments. (The McGill jail, however, is now in Ely.)

  Another semi-survivor along this short stretch of US-93 is the McGill Drug Store (open by appointment or good luck; 775/235-7082), long-closed but preserved as an ad-hoc museum under the care of the White Pine Historical Museum in neighboring Ely. If you can’t arrange a tour, peer in through the windows at a soda fountain and shelves stocked full of 1950s-era merchandise.

  Ely marks the junction of US-93 and US-50, the legendary Loneliest Road in America.