An abandoned mine serves as a stark memorial of when mercury was a valued strategic metal.

Colorful outcrops and cliffs just north of Reno provide a scenic backdrop for hiking and mountain biking.

In the little-known Pine Forest Range in northwestern Nevada, a natural lake of glacial origin.

Improbably, the largest wildlife refuge in the conterminous 48 states sits just northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada.

The only thing still moving in this town is the eponymous hot spring.

An attractive alpine lake at 8,400 feet that is accessible via a paved road.

This Gold Rush ghost town was once the subject of a territorial dispute between California and Nevada.

A facility built in 1992 for an underground nuclear test remains in place today.

An internationally-recognized dark sky sanctuary lies in northern Nevada, near the Oregon line.

On October 26, 1963, a 12-kiloton nuclear device was detonated here in granite some 1,211 feet below the ground surface.

A little-known occurrence of fossil wood in northern Washoe County, Nevada, near the Black Rock Desert.

An unexpected sinkhole in a desert flat within Gold Butte National Monument.

Narrow slot canyons in a badland eroded into soft sedimentary rock provide an otherworldly landscape in this remote Nevada state park.

See Hoover Dam and the bypass bridge from a perspective usually off-limits to the public, and float the upper part of the Black Canyon National Water Trail.

Drive up a paved road into "Nevada's Yosemite" for exquisite views and mountain hiking in an alpine setting.

The self-proclaimed gateway to the Extraterrestrial Highway.

US-50 in Nevada is known as "the Loneliest Road in America," but this earlier iteration of the route is even lonelier.

At the base of the Spring Mountains, a unique nursery packed with desert plants.

This wilderness hike to a waterfall has an unlikely beginning in suburban Reno.

A spectacular but little-known slot canyon in extreme northern Nevada, with sheer walls nearly 500 feet high and a perennial stream.

Located in the remote Monitor Valley, this travertine bowl contains a scalding pool of water.

This former open-pit manganese mine is now a massive graffiti canvas.

An ill-fated attempt to grow wheat in the sagebrush steppe of northeastern Nevada.

An unusual slot canyon in the Aztec/Navajo Sandstone has a cross-section like an inverted old-fashioned keyhole.