Have you heard of Berlin? No, for once we’re not talking about our beloved “Athens on the Spree” with its TV tower, crowded Ringbahn , and amazing concerts. We’re talking about a bona fide ghost town in the middle of the desert!
Join us in discovering Berlin, Nevada, in remote Nye County, USA. There lies an abandoned town that transports visitors back to the Wild West.
From a booming silver mine to a quiet ghost town
This “other Berlin” was founded in 1897 during the great American silver boom. Miners of German descent named the mountain settlement after their former capital.
In its heyday, nearly 300 people lived here , working hard to seek their fortune in mining. There were wooden cabins, a school, stores, and a stamp mill that ceaselessly crushed rock.
By 1911, precious metals worth nearly $849,000 ( approximately $29.8 million today) had been extracted from the rocks before the lucrative silver rush dried up. The residents moved on, and the town fell into a deep slumber. Today, the town serves as an open-air museum in a state of “arrested decay” —a condition of deliberately frozen decay.
Floating Giants Deep in the Hot Desert Sands of Nevada
And it gets even crazier! Right next to the weathered wooden shacks of the ghost town in the state park, you’ll find one of the world’s largest collections of gigantic ichthyosaur fossils. These marine reptiles, dating back up to 225 million years, grew to about 15 meters in length and swam through the prehistoric oceans long before there was a desert in Nevada.
The miners were the first to discover the fossils. However, they didn’t know what they were dealing with. When scientist Prof. Siemon Muller visited the area in 1928, he was the first to recognize that these were the remains of gigantic ichthyosaurs. Systematic excavations then began in the 1950s.
In total, the remains of nearly 40 giant ichthyosaurs have been unearthed, some of which are up to 15 meters long. To protect this incredible fossil site and the old ghost town of the silver miners, Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park was established in 1957.
Visitors can marvel at the massive bones in the Fossil House. Nowhere else in the world do the wild history of the Wild West and ancient dinosaur remains lie so bizarrely close together!
