Greg, the bartender of the Middlegate Station in Fallon, Nevada, doesn't seem all that happy about having his photograph taken. He consents and, naturally, he's ever the polite western gentleman but as the camera is raised, he retreats into taciturn cowboy mode and strikes the kind of pose you'd expect in a circa-1880 picture of Wyatt Earp. 'Come on, Greg,' says the photographer, 'surely working at a genuine Pony Express outpost, you've been in a few tourist snaps, this road isn't really that lonely, is it?'
He rocks back on his heels for a moment, looks towards the car park, which is empty except for our shiny new Chevy rental and an abandoned Fiat collapsing into the earth, then gazes towards the resolutely empty highway and the mountains beyond and turns back to us and the camera. 'Well,' he replies, 'it's not nearly as lonely as it used to be.'
This is Highway 50, one of America's forgotten routes, stretching 4,800km from Ocean City, Maryland on the Atlantic Ocean to West Sacramento, California. Dubbed the 'Loneliest Road in America' by Life magazine in 1986, the frontier spirit of Nevada is still alive and kicking along this stretch of tarmac; forget the heroic history books, most people first came to the Old West because they'd had all they could stand of being crowded, figuratively as well as literally, in the cities and just wanted to be left alone.
Many modern-day residents along Highway 50 have more in common with their pioneer ancestors than with those with a taste for 10-gallon hats and blue jeans who followed.
The 'loneliest road' title was specifically given to the section of Highway 50 that bisects the high desert of central Nevada; and it wasn't intended to flatter. Originally part of the trail blazed by European settlers, and later used by the Pony Express and Overland Stagecoach companies, it was incorporated in 1913 into the Lincoln Highway, America's first transcontinental route, before being bypassed in the 1940s (it was reactivated in 1992 as a heritage trail of sorts).
According to Life, there was nothing out here to see or do and, unless you possessed 'survival skills', you were best off avoiding it. Native Nevadans on the other hand, being a rather feisty lot, took the article's appraisal as a compliment and wear the condescension with pride. 'Come try Highway 50', the tourism council says, 'if you think you can handle it.'