Please remember to exercise caution when exploring Nevada's Ghost Towns & Mining Camps. Open shafts, drifts going into mountainsides, and old buildings, are all DANGEROUS. Be aware of your surroundings, and let someone know where you are, especially if your plans change.

Paradise Valley

Locted at end of SR 8B, 18 miles northeast of US 95 at a point 22 miles north of Winnemucca.

"A four-man prospecting party from Star City ventured onto a beautiful plain now known as Paradise Valley in the summer of 1863 to seek minerals in the surrounding hills. While nothing of value was found, they were impressed by the valley's fertile acres. One man abandoned his pick and tools and returned within a few weeks with horses, wagons, mower, haypress, and blacksmith tools to begin a hay ranch. By the end of the next year about twenty ranchers had started work, but Indian raids were so numerous that Camp Scott was established nearby to insure the safety of the ranchers. Late in the 1860's the village of Paradise City was begun, and by 1879 it had the Paradise Valley post office, the Reporter, a score of other businesses and a population of 100.
Though Paradise City was never a mining town, one of the locals working nearby must have been quite a character. Wells Drury of the Gold Hill News once saw a miner from Paradise Valley walk into a Virginia City saloon, and pounding on the bar with his six-shooter until the glasses danced, announced: "I'm a roarin' ripsnorter from hoo-rah camp, an' I can't be stepped on. I'm an angel from Paradise Valley and when I flop my wings there's a tornado loose.... give me some of your meanest whiskey, a whole lot of it, that tastes like bumblebee stings pickled in vitriol. I swallered a cyclone for breakfast, a powder-mill for lunch, and haven't begin to cough yet. Don't crowd me." Drury further related that one by one the saloon patrons quietly left, and when the bad man turned around, the place was empty!
Paradise Valley, which long ago dropped the City from its name, continued through the mid-20th century as a quiet ranching community with hotels, stores, saloons, and Methodist and Catholic Churches. Hitching posts, old sidewalks, frame buildings of a bygone era (many uninhabited) and dirt streets make this town an interesting place to visit."

Return to: Ghost Town & Mining Camp Map