Clown Motel
A motel in the mining town of Tonopah, Nevada: more than 2,000 clown figures in the lobby and an old miners' cemetery right next door.
What it is
The Clown Motel stands in Tonopah, a town that grew out of the silver rush that began here in 1900. It was opened in 1985 by the children of collector Clarence David, who put his 150 clowns on display. Today the collection runs to more than 2,000 figurines, dolls and paintings, and the motel bills itself as America's scariest.
The cemetery next door
Right beside it lies the Old Tonopah Cemetery, in use from 1901 to 1911. Its wooden crosses and markers tell the story of the boomtown: buried here are victims of an epidemic from those years and of the 1911 Belmont Mine fire. The cemetery is open to visitors.
When and how
Tonopah sits on US 95 roughly halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, which makes the motel a handy overnight stop on a Nevada road trip. The town lies at about 1,800 m: summer days are hot and winter nights are freezing. Long stretches of desert separate the towns of central Nevada, so fill up whenever you can.
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