Middle of Somewhere

Nevada’s Highway 50 has plenty of miles. What it doesn’t have is a whole lot of people. Or amenities. Still, it continues to draw new residents along with road-trippers. For Deseret News, Natalia Galicza takes the road less traveled and talks to the folks who have made it home.

There are challenges, of course. Hundreds of miles between service stations also means hundreds of miles between many Nevadans and medical care; some 89 percent of rural residents statewide lack access to a primary care doctor. And cruising down monotonous roads for hours creates a phenomenon known as “road hypnosis,” where drivers are lulled to a passive state, fatigued and often with little memory of the trip. That risk of crashing is what led Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong to call Highway 50 the “most dangerous highway in the state” more than a decade ago.