Rhyolite, NV

Located off Highway 374 just west of Beatty in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Tom Kelly’s Bottle House is worth a stop on the way to Death Valley. Constructed in 1906 during the gold rush, Kelly built his masterpiece from 51,000 beer bottles, adobe and mud. And since there were some 50 bars in town, there was never a shortage of building materials. As for Kelly’s motivation and reasoning for his chosen medium, he was often known to say that it was easier to build a home from beer bottles than it was to mill lumber from the native Joshua trees. Kelly’s creation is easy to find too — just follow the signs to it from Rhyolite Road. And the good news is, there’s an accessible parking pad and a level sidewalk over to the house. The bottle house sits behind a fence to protect it from vandals, but it’s sometimes opened for private tours. Still you can get an excellent gander at the house from the sidewalk near the entrance.