We're in wild horse country now. The open range, where there are no fences, is home to thousands of wild horses in Nevada. Drive along Route 6 and you'll see them roaming the flats, climbing the hills or sharing the grass with cattle.
These sleek, graceful animals are a thing of beauty - but not to everyone. Ranchers say there are just too many danged horses on the range. Too many for the cattle, too many for the land and too many for their own good.
 Denny Manzonie kneels besides his mother's grave - which is on the grounds of the Manzonie ranch just east of Currant, NV. Being raised in the area and on the ranch, Denny's parents and members of his family have chosen their final resting place - a small plot of land on the Manzonie ranch.
There are only a few plants on the range that make good feed for cattle, said Larry Schutte, manager of Five Mile Ranch in one of Nevada's many valleys. Little-by-little the horses are destroying the feed, said Larry, who looks every-bit a cowboy with his wide-brimmed hat, weathered face, lean body and bandana tied around his neck.
Horses and cows eat high-protein plants like wild sage and rice grass. Cows eat the top of the plants and move on to another pasture, Larry said.
"Horses eat right down to the dirt," he said. And they don't move on until everything's gone. The grass doesn't recover and lower quality plants move in, he said.
That wasn't so bad when there were only a handful of wild horses. Larry said the federal Bureau of Land Management has adopted a hands-off policy for the horses and the population has exploded in the past decade.
By the BLM's reckoning there are fewer than 150 horses in the valley, but Larry says that's a fictional number.
"There are over 600 horses in this piece of land. There are supposed to be 132. You'll see that all over the state," he said.
About 50 miles east, rancher Denny Manzonie said the BLM seems more interested in preserving horses than the ranches.
"They seem to want all of this land for recreation. I guess they get more out of the players than the workers. I don't like it. To me everything's out of balance," said Denny, who raises Black Angus on a 200 acre-ranch and an 85-acre feedlot.
Denny grew up in Railroad Valley and he wants to die here. His mom and dad are buried on a little cemetery on the property, where he'll join them some day.
But now he's considering a neighbor's offer to buy the property.
"It's tough to make one of these ranches pay these days," he said. Denny survived because he has rights to a spring that flows through the desert valley.
"If he makes the right deal, I think I'd sell," said Denny, who would stay on a manager. But he'll never sell that little corner where, some day, he'll return to the land.
ALIEN ENVIRONMENT
Suppose you're from planet Glob, out for a spin in your SUV (space utility vehicle) when the engine starts clanking. You pick a remote spot on a small planet to land for repairs but never make it back into the air.
 Joe Hurley and Travis Lindhorst stand aside the Extraterrestrial Highway (a.k.a.Highway 375) sign - a route that visitors can take to the small community of Rachel, NV. This is the closest spot you can get to the infamous alien spaceship capture at Area 51.
That's roughly the scenario behind the rumors about Area 51, the super secret site where some folks believe the government examines the remains of fallen space ships and aliens.
If you've ever watched The X Files or attended a UFO conference, you know all about Area 51, just outside the hamlet of Rachel, Nevada.
In 1996, when X-Files was still in its prime, Nevada named Rachel's main road the Extraterrestrial Highway. The highway connects routes 93 and 6 in a section of the country where the stars look close enough to touch. They say this is the darkest spot on the continent.
Now here's the weird part: you really might see something strange in the sky out here. The area is a hot spot for UFO sightings. The Little A'Le'Inn motel in Rachael is "Ground Zero" for UFO believers.
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Maybe the sightings have something to do with Area 51 - or maybe they're connected to Nellis Air Force Range, where the government develops new planes and weapons. The H-Bomb, U-2 spy plane and the Stealth fighter were tested at Nellis, which stretches from Las Vegas northward to the town Tonopah, west of Rachel.
In Tonopah, folks can tell there's a new Nellis project when government workers start flowing into town. Of course, the locals don't know exactly what's going on, but sometimes they'll see strange things in the sky. They were the first civilians to see the Stealth Bomber in flight. When the project was completed, the Air Force sent a letter to Tonopah, thanking the community for keeping its secret.
They also test everyday weapons at Nellis. Walking along Route 6, I could hear the booming rumbles of explosions. I thought it was either bombs or mine excavation. Tonopah residents said it was bombs.
TONOPAH
Jim Butler wasn't the most industrious guy in the world. He was a lawyer, but he didn't care for the long hours, so a century ago he set out to make a fortune prospecting in the hills of Nevada
 A wooden headstone explains the death of one of 14 victims that perished in the Tonoph-Belmont Mining Fire of Feb. 23,1911. Tonopah's first cemetery (c.1901-1911) is the final resting place of many from Tonopah's pioneer days, as well as the victims of the "1902 Tonopah Plague".
Around Tonopah, they say that one of Jim's mules broke away and Jim picked up a rock to throw at it. It was so heavy that Jim decided to keep it.
He showed his find to other prospectors who told him it wasn't worth much. Later, an assayer said rock was loaded with gold and silver.
Jim claimed most of the land in the area, but he didn't want to do the heavy work, so he let others mine the sites and shared in their profits. Later he sold his rights to a Pennsylvania company and was a wealthy man.
That was the start of Tonopah, a place that calls itself Mining Town, USA. In the early days it was quite the place. By 1916, there were 7,000 residents, five newspapers, 30 saloons a five-story grand hotel and 500 miles of mine tunnels. Wyatt and Virgil Earp moved here after the OK Corral gunfight and boxer Jack Dempsey was a bouncer in Tonopah.
No place is closer to its mines than Tonopah. If you walk along Main Street or enter most any downtown building, you're probably standing atop tunnel or shaft. A few years ago, a street caved in when a tunnel's shoring gave way.
Today, Tonopah is struggling. On the edge of town you'll find several closed motels. They catered to government workers when the nearby air force base test areas were booming. Even the grand Hotel Mitzpah is closed.
To make things worse, owners rarely tear down an unused building. If they do, the property goes back to the mines.
"One thing that would help this town is zoning," said Al O'Donnell, of the Chamber of Commerce.
The town's main attraction is the Mining Park, where some of the most important mines operated, just a stone's throw from Main Street. More than $ 1 billion (in today's money) worth of material were taken from the mines.
In the park, you can peer down mine shafts and explore the buildings where giant pulleys raised and lowered men and equipment into the earth.
You can walk above a long, deep trench where miners extracted silver close to the surface.
Standing on a metal grate walkway you can look down at the timbers braced between the walls to keep them from collapsing. The trench goes deeper and deeper until it disappears in the darkness.
 Ore carts were used to haul rock out of the mines to a hand-sorting crew that worked at the Silver Top Grizzly in Tonopah, NV. Built in 1905, this facility was used to separate silver ore from bad ore (which went to a waste pile outside).
Tonopah is on a main road about midway between Reno and Las Vegas, so there's plenty of traffic. Local folks just wish more people would stop for a while. Some of the main hotels, the Hi-Desert Inn and Ramada do quite well. But Al said he'd like to see more shops on Main Street.
The area is also trying to become more or a tourist destination. Along with the mining park, the community is trying to promote itself as the darkest spot in the U.S. - ideal for star watching.
"We'd like to create a star-watching trail," Al said.
And who knows, the stargazers might just see something strange in the sky.
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