Southern Nevada and Death Valley

Having read both reviews prior to my purchase, I was somewhat apprehensive. However, as a novice history buff, I have thoroughly enjoyed using the maps to assist in scouting one day trips from Vegas. The photos are dated, but add an interesting comparison when viewed today. True the ghost towns mentioned are not as they appeared in the original printing, however, the landscape provides interesting backdrop as one travels back and tries to live or view the past as it once was. A Gps does help in trying to locate some of the towns or mines especially over gravel roads. Trips should be planned with adequate gas and water.

This is the companion volume to Paher's Atlas of ghost towns in northern Nevada. Again, there are numerous very good and detailed maps, many excellent if dated photos (they seem to have been largely shot in the 1950s or later, but not recently), and very little text. As such, these atlases are themselves companions to Paher's larger book on ghost towns, and the maps themselves include page references to where to find more information in the larger book on a given town. Visitors to Vegas expecting to trip all over nearby ghost towns will be disappointed; there are fewer decent and interesting sites in the south than in the north. Still, the interested reader needs both atlases and Paher's full study as well.

Compared to its sister volume, which covers the northern half of the state, this atlas is a disappointment. I've spent quite a bit of time plotting all of the ghost town and mining camp sites from both atlases onto DeLorme topo maps, and felt I was really able to pinpoint sites in the northern book, whereas in this one there just wasn't as detailed enough information to confidently do the same. Distances, for example, were given in the northern book, but are missing here; likewise other identifying features like canyon names and smaller streams. It's still an excellent source, and the two atlases together locate all the sites detailed in Paher's classic NEVADA GHOST TOWNS AND MINING CAMPS. The atlases also contain quite a few photographs.