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The Loneliest Road (U.S. 50)
The empty desert highway across Nevada
The stretch of U.S. Route 50 across central Nevada — roughly 287 miles (462 km) from Fernley to the Utah line — earned the nickname "the Loneliest Road in America" from a 1986 magazine article that meant it as a warning. Nevada embraced it instead, and the desolate route crossing basin after basin of the Great Basin, with long gaps between tiny towns like Austin and Eureka, became a badge of honor and a road-trip draw. U.S. 50 as a whole is a transcontinental highway running coast to coast.