Following on from the resounding success¹ of 2008’s first annual Google Sightseeing Desert Week, this week we’re running with the theme all over again, astoundingly, exactly a year since last time!

We’ve got a plethora of desert-related posts planned for the week, but if there’s a desert-related sight that you think we should be including make sure to let us know.

This post is part of an occasional series where we visit some of the world’s most interesting abandoned places.

A couple of hundred kilometres northwest of Las Vegas lies the former mining town of Rhyolite, one of the largest ghost towns in Nevada.

Founded in 1904, the town had an initially huge level of growth, but it was abruptly abandoned just a handful of years later. Today the eerie remains of Rhyolite which still survive here in the desert provide us with a fascinating look into America’s past.

The town was named for the richest ore in the area, rhyolite; but it was a gold rush in the nearby hills that propelled the population to around 4,000 just three years later.

By this time the town had water mains, electricity, telephones, a hospital, a bank, an opera house, a school, the railroad, and (allegedly) 53 saloons.

The ruin of the Cook Bank Building; and as it was in its heyday.

By the end of 1910 the Montgomery Shoshone Mine – the town’s lifeblood – was operating at a loss, and in 1911 it closed for good. With the mine gone there was nothing to keep the people here any longer, and by 1920 the population of Rhyolite was effectively zero.

Rhyolite School today; and as it was in 1915, already looking deserted.

One of the best surviving buildings in Rhyolite is the former Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Depot. It’s unusual for ghost towns in Nevada¹ to have this many buildings remaining – the survival of these ones in the harsh desert environment is thanks to their construction using materials other than wood and canvas. Like the house made of tens of thousands of beer bottles.

Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Depot today; and under construction in 1908.

The buildings here won’t last forever, but the fact that they have survived this long is impressive enough.

Vimeo has a good video tour, Flickr has a ton of photos, and the official site has a wealth of absolute fascinating historical photos.

As well as being a holiday here in the UK, today is Star Wars Day (yes, simply because of the bad pun I’m afraid). So here’s a roundup of some Star Wars related sights!

First up is Star Wars Path near Atlanta, Georgia. There’s a road sign too, but it isn’t really legible on Street View. What I don’t know however, is how it got its name?

In the original Star Wars movie the spaceport of Mos Eisley was on the planet Tatooine, but in fact it was filmed here at Matmata in Tunisia. Some interior scenes were even filmed in the underground homes of the people who live here, who these days make good money from charging tourists to take pictures.

Last week on Twitter we just happened to see these rather unconvincing-looking portraits of some Star Wars characters, that form part of an otherwise impressive piece of French graffiti.

Does anyone know of other Star Wars themed sights that we can visit today?

Thanks to Keir Clarke and Virtual Globe Trotting.

Even a company as all-powerful as Google occasionally needs a helping hand, as the driver of this Street View car in Australia discovered. Give him credit though: despite getting stuck in the mud, he kept his camera running to record the little drama that played out under the hot Outback sun…

Our man got into difficulties on the remote Bourke-Wilcannia road, in north west New South Wales. In the early days of Australian settlement, the town of Bourke came to represent the western edge of civilisation, and the expression “back o’Bourke” is still used to refer to the wilds of the Outback. It’s no surprise, then, that the road conditions can be far from ideal.

After battling bravely through the first flood, the Street View car finally gets bogged down in this patch of mud a few miles short of the small town of Tilpa¹.

Cursing his luck, our driver makes a heroic effort to free himself, spinning the wheels and sending mud flying into the air, but to no avail.

Luckily, help soon arrives, in the form of a vehicle that seems to be coping rather better with the conditions.

The driver of the 4×4² hops out to see what’s happening, even crouching down to have a look at the wheels.

Good job he remembered to bring the tow rope – our man is freed to film another day. Sadly, he switched off the camera soon after he was pulled free, so we can’t see what happened next. Let’s hope he at least bought his knight in shining armour a cold beer.

Thanks to Ken Arnold.

About half way between Los Angeles and Las Vegas you might spot an unusual exit sign on Interstate 15, directing you towards the delightfully unpronounceable Zzyzx Road.

If you were to take the exit, you’d find Zzyzx Road to be rather long, and very boring. So boring in fact, that the Street View car gave up having only recorded the first short section.

But the length of Zzyzx Road might well have been a deliberate ploy to keep people stumbling upon what lies at the end…

Up until 1974, travellers that persevered on Zzyzx Road were rewarded with arrival at Zzyzx Springs, a hotel and spa set up here amongst the hot springs in 1944 by crackpot quack and radio evangelist Curtis Howe Springer.

Mr Springer may have named his hotel so as it would always be alphabetically last when the authorities scoured the phone book for wrongdoers – as the whole operation was run completely illegally.

The property was never Mr Springer’s, and he never obtained permission to build here, so it’s surprising that Zzyzx Springs managed to remain squatting here for 30 years before he was eventually kicked off the land.

Today Zzyzx is the site of the Desert Studies Center in the Mojave National Preserve which “provides the opportunity for individuals and groups to conduct research, receive instruction, and experience the desert environment” (Official site).

Thanks to Tim Derby, XF and Alan.