A tribute to a great town and travel buddy

Killer, my faithful canine travel companion, stood stoically in the shadow of the towering graffiti-strewn school bus at the International Car Forest.

After shooting a short video for “The Traveling Cartoonist”, we drove the half mile to downtown Goldfield. This was November 7th.

Every dog has its day and every town its boom! A hundred years ago Goldfield saw its population climb to 20,000. The discovery of gold in 1903 attracted all sorts of grizzly miners, card sharks, bootleggers, horse thieves, day traders, and women of the night.

Competition was so fierce that one latecomer was said to have scrawled on a survey board, “I lay claim from this point 1,000 feet up in the air.”

At one point, Goldfield became the center of car racing, prizefighting, and gun-slinging. American West lawman Wyatt Earp came out to help his brother Virgil set up as Goldfield’s deputy sheriff.

Then came the fire, caused by a moonshine still explosion. Then the flood. And by 1920 most people had deserted this desert town. Dog eat dog. With the boom came the bust, but one thing that didn’t fold was the pioneer spirit of Goldfield as is evident with KGFN, Goldfield’s radio station, which provided a soundtrack for our walk down Main Street. One of the best independent radio stations there is, in my opinion, and still streaming online.

We soaked in the relics of an impressive past; the Consolidated Mines Building, the Esmeralda County Courthouse, and the Goldfield Hotel, purported to be the most haunted place in America.

We slept at the cozy and quaint Goldfield Stop Inn, which wasn’t haunted, but if it were, I’m fairly confident that Killer would have stood his ground and chased off the curious apparition. A true underdog story.

The night of November 23, Killer Nixon Coleman passed away in his sleep. Now he’s in the big dog park in the sky. My friend Patrick tried to reassure me that, “If dogs lived as long as humans there would be no one to take care of them.” I suppose that’s true. I’ll just miss the gentle face licks in the morning to wake me up so we could get going with our day and plan our next travel adventure.

Just like towns, our lives are boom and bust, and this holiday season I’m just thankful for the time that we had together. Now gold has been discovered in Beatty. Boom incoming. Life stubbornly staggers on.

Eric Coleman is an artist based in Pahrump. He is also a screen writer and and an actor. He is the cartoonist for the Pahrump Valley Times and Tonopah Times-Bonanza. Follow him on his YouTube Chanel The Traveling Cartoonist at https://tinyurl.com/2swrkmpm. For map information, contact Mr. Coleman at ericjamescoleman@gmail.com.