The drive to Laughlin from Las Vegas is pretty cool, with a number of sights to see along the way.
You head out of town on I-215/US95/US93 (or if you want to drive out on Boulder Highway, you can take in the excellent Clark County Heritage Museum; see QoD 12/20/07 for a description). From either the freeway or Boulder Highway, you leave Henderson and climb Railroad Pass. Just past the top of the pass, US 93 and 95 separate; US 93 heads east through Boulder City to Hoover Dam and on into Arizona, while US 95 turns due south on a nearly ruler-straight and nicely paved road for 75 miles till the turnoff to Laughlin. You can take a couple-hour side trip to Boulder City and the dam, or you can turn onto US 95 and spend your time exploring the barren desert country off of it.
The first 35 or so miles along US 95, you pass through Eldorado Valley, with the McCullough Range on the west and the Eldorado Range on the east. You’ll soon see the 90-acre El Dorado Energy Solar Expansion Project, North America's largest thin-film photovoltaic solar-power plant with its 167,400 solar panels that produce 10 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1,500 houses. Nearby is a 480-megawatt gas-fired power plant. You can’t exactly visit the place; the road to it is "private." But at least you’ll know what it is.
In another few miles is the turnoff onto NV 165 to Nelson along a 12-mile paved road. Nelson was the first mining boomtown in southern Nevada; gold and silver were discovered in the hills here in the 1860s. It’s a partial ghost town with a handful of houses, a number of mining ruins (take care not to fall in open holes), a defunct Texaco station that’s a favorite for Hollywood location scouts; it was used in the movies 3000 Miles to Graceland and They Came To Rob Las Vegas, a lot of junk, and a mining tour that might or might be open when you get there. A nicely paved road continues seven miles east down to the Colorado River and Nelson Landing.
Back on US 95, it’s 25 miles to Searchlight, Nevada. Here you’ll find a couple of motels, a diner, a parade of billboards for Laughlin, and two main attractions: the Searchlight Nugget casino-coffee shop and the town’s museum.
The Searchlight Nugget is full of little gems to occupy your interest as you stretch your legs. By the cage is an old Mills Black Beauty nickel slot machine; this is the original "one-armed bandit" in the shape of a cowboy with one arm amputated and the other arm -- the slot handle -- holding a revolver. It was restored in 1985 and has been sitting right here ever since. Also check out the a big aerial view of Searchlight, turquoise cow skulls, and a half-dozen posters of the Calgary Stampede. The coffee shop serves typical road food and typical prices.
Turn off US 95 onto NV 164; in one long block is the Searchlight Historic Museum and Mining Park, a big-time museum for such a small town. Searchlight has had a long and interesting history, even claiming several celebrities as original residents (including U.S. Senator Harry Reid) and it’s all here in the displays, photographs, and "ghost narrations."
Continuing east along NV 164 (Cove Road), it’s another 14 miles down to Cottonwood Cove on Lake Mohave. On the way, notice the teddy-bear cholla forest -- an amazing sight worth the hour-or-so roundtrip. The Cove is a large facility in the Lake Mead Recreation Area, with a Park Service interpretive center and discovery trail, café, campground, picnic area, RV park, mini-mart and gas station, and marina, not to mention a nice beach on a big lake. All in all, this is a great secret getaway a little more than an hour from downtown Las Vegas.
Ten miles south is the tiny town of CalNevAri strung along the highway that grew up around an old World War II airstrip. A line of single-wide mobile homes and shade trees hug the road on both sides; in "town" are the main café/bar/post office and across the highway is the motel/RV park/minim art/laundromat.
A little south of CalNevAri is the turnoff for Christmas Tree Pass, a 17-mile graded dirt road that twists and turns through the Newberry Mountains northwest of Laughlin. It crosses a 3,500-pass, shadowed by Spirit Mountain, a 5,600-foot peak that was revered by the southern Paiute. See QoD 11/10/08 for the full description.
If you bypass Christmas Tree, the turnoff onto NV 163 to Laughlin is 10 miles south of CalNevAri; it’s 21 miles down to Laughlin through the rugged Newberry Mountains to the casino town. Once in Laughlin, you can take in the casino strip, Davis Dam, and Katherine Landing and Bullhead City on the Arizona side of the Colorado River.
