There was a time when the main road west of Delta wandered past a desert hermit's den where thirsty travelers could buy home brew.
Prohibition was on then, but that didn't stop anybody."A lot of guys used to go out there and drink with him," recalls Ward Petersen, mayor of Hinckley, a Millard County town of 500 that today is the area's last outpost of civilization until the Nevada line.
When progress came after World War II, the road to the bootlegger's place at Marjum's Pass was abandoned as federal highways snaked west. By the early 1950s, U.S. 50 had passed through Hinckley, offering a straighter shot across the Sevier Desert into Nevada.
It was an obscure route, traversing little-known country until some writer someplace dubbed it "The Loneliest Road in America." The label stuck, and the Great Basin stretch of U.S. 50 became famous.
In Nevada, they put up signs between Ely and Fallon proudly boasting the name. In Utah, they let it speak for itself.
Today there is absolutely nothing in the way of human settlement along the 83 empty miles of highway between Hinckley and the Border Inn, a state-line motel with 24-hour cafe and casino strategically situated on the Nevada side of the border. Between there and Ely, Nev., another hour away, is a single, ramshackle outpost called the Nowhere Cafe.
In such solitude is the region's charm.
"There isn't much in the way of people besides isolated ranch houses and access roads to old mine sites," says Terry Baldino, interpretive specialist at Great Basin National Park, just off the highway west of Baker, Nev. "That's part of the appeal of the area. Folks can go through it and feel they're in the Old West."
But let the traveler beware.
Back at Hinckley, where Nancy Talbot runs a gas station on the west edge of town, hapless motorists often wander in from the west bereft of their vehicle, which has run out of gas somewhere out in the desert.
"We usually have two or three a week who don't make it," says Talbot. "We keep a milk jug around just for that."
With the creation in 1986 of Great Basin National Park, traffic through town has picked up considerably, Petersen said. Most making the cross-country drive are tourists, and Baldino said well over half the park's 70,000 visitors each year arrive from Utah via U.S. 50.
Aside from desert and the occasional shot-up road signs, there isn't much to see on Utah's stretch of U.S. 50, concedes Talbot, "but it's prettier than going from Salt Lake to Wendover," the route most Utahns choose to reach Nevada.
Sevier Lake stretches like some hazy mirage to the south about a half-hour out of Hinckley, and mile-high Skull Rock Pass offers a crooked respite from the mostly curveless miles.
Dallas Anderson, who lives in the town of Deseret, near Hinckley, and runs cattle on the open range west of town, says there is an austere beauty to the drive.
"It depends on what you're used to. It grows on you."