Location:
Approximately 40 miles west and north of Wendover, Nevada along active railroad tracks.
Type OF Site:
Old Railroad Stop with buildings. THIS SITE IS CURRENTLY CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC.
Map:
1:100,000-Scale Geological Survey Topographic Map of Wells, Nevada-Utah
Directions:
Take exit 378/Oasis from I80 and turn north at the stop sign onto highway 233. At 6.2 miles along highway 233 there is a road on the left with a stop sign. This road goes to the Cobre site, but there are signs at the site indicating that it is off limits to the public.
Access:
There is a good dirt road. A 2WD vehicle should be OK in good weather. A vehicle pulling a trailer or camper should be OK.
Comments:
Use caution along the tracks since they are active.
Has this site been open to the public in the recent past? If so, how productive has it been?
History:
(From nvghosttowns.com)
Omar was the original site, located a short distance away, which served as a station on the Southern Pacific Railroad. When Cobre was established as the northern terminus of the Nevada Northern Railway, all the buildings were moved from Omar to Cobre. Cobre boomed in 1906 as construction on the railroad continued. By 1910, Cobre had a population of 60. However, as the automobile became prominent, passenger traffic on the railroad declined and was primarily used for shipping the huge amounts of ore being produced from the copper mines near Ely. By the 1930s, only a handful of people still lived in Cobre. Daily passenger service to Ely stopped in 1938 and Cobre was pretty much a ghost town after that. While the Nevada Northern Railway continued using Cobre as a shipping point for ore, the trains came to a dead town. Only foundations remain today next to a cinder block engine house built during the 1960s.
(From ghosttowns.com)
The Spanish word for copper is cobre. It would seem appropriate that the settlement at the terminus of the Nevada Northern Railway serving the rich copper mines in the area be named Cobre. The year was 1905. Cobre boomed in 1906 when the Western Pacific Railroad moved its headquarters from Winnemucca to Cobre. The town supported a hotel and a post office opened in 1906 along with other businesses and stores. As Cobre grew, it developed a reputation for violence. There were several murders during the next few years and by 1910 the town had a population of only sixty. Cobre had reached its peak. While ore trains from Ely kept coming through Cobre, passenger and freight traffic declined during the ensuing years. By 1937 Cobre was labeled a ghost town even though twenty people lived there. In 1948 the Southern Pacific Railroad abandoned Cobre as a shipping point. Cobres end came on May 31, 1956 when the post office closed for good. The only structure left is a cinder block engine house built during the last years of the Nevada Northern Railway. Submitted by: HBC
