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National Geographic : 1974 Jun
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looks out upon great sweeps of pungent sage brush desert and hills dotted with stunted juniper trees. It is one of a hundred mining camps that boomed and busted and have all but vanished from the Nevada landscape. In the 1860's and '70's, it was a flourishing com munity of 2,000 people with a magnificent showpiece of a courthouse. The bust period for Belmont had already begun when, at the turn of the century, gold and silver were discovered at nearby Gold field and Tonopah. Almost overnight Belmont became a ghost town. For half a century it re mained so. But in the past few years a hand ful of people, for the most part elderly trailer dwellers, have trickled into Belmont. Today its main street is lined with collapsed houses. Here and there a building clings to life with faded lettering on a wooden facade and rags of curtains flapping in smashed-out windows. The silence is broken only by the moan of the desert wind. The self-appointed guardian of what is left of Belmont, 81-year-old Rose Walter, is a tall, erect woman with severe blue eyes, white hair caught up in a net, and a .44-caliber pistol (page 743). At first she took me for a scavenger of the ruins. "These old houses, such as they are, still belong to someone some where," she warned. After we had made peace, her stern demeanor melted and she in vited me inside her house for coffee. Like the courthouse, this structure does not seem destined for extinction soon. Built in 1865, it is a rock house with walls two feet thick. Flattened tin cans are nailed over holes in the floor. There is no telephone, and run ning water comes from a tank behind the house. She brewed coffee on an old wood stove, and I learned something of her exist ence in a ghost town. Living Alone at 81-and Liking It Belmont was Rose Walter's childhood home. When her miner husband died of sili cosis, she chose to remain in the dying town. For most of her lifetime, she has been Bel mont's only permanent resident. "Summers are nice, except for the rattle snakes," she told me. "The country's infested with them, coming to find shade under porches. Would you believe I've killed eight rattlers this summer? I aim for the head and never miss." When I asked her about wintertime, she shrugged. "The snow and the cold don't bother me hardly at all. I got a strong house and that old wood stove keeps me warm as I need to be. Would you believe it got down to 20 below in that cold snap last winter? And ten feet of snow, though not all at the same time. Lonely? Heavens, no! I got my radio and my books to keep me company. And when the holidays come, the few of us here
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