LIKE an Easter egg hidden on a billiard table, Austin is hard NOT to find. All motorists traversing U.S. Highway 50, eventually funnel onto Main Street, Austin, whether they want to or not.
Most travelers, by then either hungry or out of gas, will welcome it as
a place to fill up and stretch their legs. Others will regard it as a
bottleneck forcing them to slow down and pay attention for a moment. A
very few will quit their jobs, buy a house, and stay in Austin for the rest
of their lives. The attractions?
Aside from the obvious--clean air,
friendly people, wide-open spaces--Austin inspires a sense of well-being.
Mentally, it's a realization that the rats don't really need you to get on
with their race. Physically, well, it's probably a temporary,
light-headedness due to the 6,600-foot altitude. Whatever the cause, the
world looks a little better from Austin than it does from it does from
say, Las Vegas or Reno. It's the type of benefit that can't be measured.
What is measurable is Austin's remoteness. Austin is llO miles east of
Fallon, 89 miles south of Battle Mountain, 70 miles west of Eureka, and
117 miles north of Tonopah.
Keep in mind, though, that Nevada has a grain
to it, and miles seem shorter going across the grain than going with it.
The road south from Austin to Tonopah runs with the grain--that is,
parallel to the mountain ranges--and anybody who's ever made that trip can
tell you it's very nearly undrivable in one lifetime. Fallon, on the other
hand, lies across the grain to the west and seems just down the road. (If
you're in mountain country and have a choice, always travel east to west.
It won't help your gas mileage, but it'll do wonders for your disposition.)
Highway 50, or Main Street, just creases the southern edge of town. It
runs along the very bottom of Pony Canyon, and from the center line
there's no place to go but up. Ninety percent of Austin lies on the hill
sides to the north, and there's a reason for that--winter sunshine. If you
live south of the highway, a hill blocks the sun, and you won't cast a
shadow from November through February.
All of the motels in Austin, incidentally, are located south of the highway. Vicky Jones owns the Lincoln Motel, and she finds the winters down there acceptable, but then Vicky is from Sweden. I guess if you've lived near the Arctic Circle, you may like it south of the highway. That same sun-blocking hill is, however, the best place to go to get a good view of Austin It's known as "A" Hill, because that's where the big, white-washed, rock "A" is located, and there's a road to the top angling up from the town park.
It's a pretty good hike considering the elevation, but I wouldn't recommend
driving up there unless your vehicle has large knobby tires and Yosemite
Sam mudflaps.
From the top Austin looks a lot flatter that it really is, and you'll notice it isn't quite, er, symmetrical. Streets that were mapped and plotted straight-line ended up wandering all over creation in search of good footing on the hillsides. Not only does that liven up intersections for motorists used to four-way stops, but it also creates interesting survey problems. Title searches become nightmares when Broad Street officially runs through your kitchenette, but everybody who lives here seems to have come up with the same solution to property-line fuzziness: ignore it.
There are places in Austin where you can go around the block by making four left turns, but more often than not you'll simply lose sight of whatever it was you were trying to find in the first place. You can't get lost, exactly_it's too small a layout for that_but you can get confused to the point of having to start all over again. Asking directions won't help much, either, because the advice will be keyed on local landmarks such as "the old hospital" or "the round house." If you're bent on finding the Austin home of a specific person, the best way is to move here.
BY EUROPEAN standards Austin has no history, but by Nevada standards it has a fair amount. The official version of the town's founding states that in 1862 William Talcott, an employee of the Overland Mail and Stage Company at Jacob's Spring, wandered up Pony Canyon in search of stray horses and accidentally found a ledge of silver ore.
Now, I hate to scoff at history but, as Mr. Spock might put it, that is highly illogical. I've chased a horse or two in my time, and the last thing on your mind is picking up rocks, unless you're planning to throw them at the recalcitrant equine (bleep)s. More likely Talcott found the ore because he was prospecting and came up with the stray horse business to explain to his boss why he wasn't minding the station.
If that was the case, Talcott was the first to find out that simply being in Austin demands an explanation, a condition that hasn't changed much in the past 128 years. However, it came about, the assay on Talcott's ore started the biggest silver stampede since the Comstock, and within a year thousands of miners and prospectors flocked to the area.
The first center of population was Jacobsville, located near the stage stop at Jacob's Springs, but it quickly moved to Clifton, nearer the strike. Clifton had the advantage of being right at the mouth of Pony Canyon, presently the site of the ro deo grounds, but it, too died of attrition as soon as Pony Canyon proper was widened enough to slap together a few boardwalk saloons. The next day everybody moved up to Austin. (Well, O.K. The time frame may be slightly skewed, but the point is that things happened fast before real estate agents and lawyers came along.)
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