An oasis in the Nevada desert, this crossroads city is bursting with pioneer history, Basque culture and big engines.
Winnemucca is a secluded gem in the Great Basin, with rolling dunes and a mountain range breaking up its wide, open vista. Named after a local Native American chief, Winnemucca has had a long history interwoven with the Paiute and Shoshone tribes, frontier settlers, Basque culture and a buzzing Chinatown.
Take a historical walking tour and visit the Humboldt County Museum to learn about Winnemucca’s pioneer history. Experience fantastic Basque cuisine at one of Winnemucca’s family-style or fine dining restaurants, traditionally enjoyed with a chilled glass of Picon Punch.
Winnemucca and its surroundings beg to be explored on wheels. The air is filled with the roar of motorcycles on Memorial Day weekend for the Run-A-Mucca motorcycle rally. Enter your car in the annual Fifties Fever drag races in high summer, or cheer others on and join the street dance or poker run. Discover the desert highlands on an adrenaline-pumping mountain bike ride. Take a backcountry route and explore some of the dusty trails once travelled by the Butch Cassidy's infamous "Wild Bunch".
Summer really gets this desert city humming, but winter also offers plenty of attractions and activities at the indoor Winnemucca Events Complex and in the great outdoors. Infinite clear blue skies and all-day sunshine are followed by sudden desert cold, so be prepared and bring warm clothing for nighttime.
This high desert oasis is located at a highway crossroads in the centre of northern Nevada. Winnemucca’s convenient location on these two major highways makes getting to this city by car or bus easy. Start your journey to the Pacific Ocean on the scenic Winnemucca to the Sea Highway. You can also reach Winnemucca with efficient Amtrak service or by flying into Winnemucca Municipal Airport, located just 5 miles (8 kilometres) southwest of downtown Winnemucca.
In true Nevada style, Winnemucca offers breathtaking desert landscapes, exhilarating casinos, car rallies, rodeos and big country hearts.
![The?Thunder Mountain Monument?is a series ofoutsider art?sculptures and architectural forms which were assembled by Frank Van Zant starting in 1969 upon his arrival in?Imlay, Nevada; it is located on a shoulder of?I-80. A WWII veteran from Oklahoma, Frank Van Zant had served with the?7th Armoured Division,[1]?fighting in several campaigns, and been badly burned in a tank battle outside ofLeipzig, Germany.[2]?A self-identified?Creek Indian,[3]he took the?Native American?name Rolling Mountain Thunder after experiencing an?epiphany, and took on the twin but related tasks of both building shelters from the presumed coming apocalypse, and making a?de facto?spiritual haven for spiritual seekers of the?hippie?era. (There is no Thunder Mountain in the vicinity.)The site contains three stone and cement buildings and over 200 cement sculptures variously depicting Native Americans and their protective spirits, massacres, and purported injustices. Thunder Mountain Monument (or Park) is replete with found objects (such as, but not limited to, car hoods, dolls' heads, typewriters, and gas pumps), many of which are incorporated into the buildings themselves; one framework forms a large handle so the Great Spirit could take the building away after Thunder's death.He was long subjected to harassment by the local townspeople, and his site was partially destroyed by arson in 1983, the same year he was named Nevada's Artist of the Year; a heavy cigarette smoker, Rolling Mountain Thunder committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in 1989. His uniquely wrought environment was neglected and subject to vandalism until it was declared a Nevada State Historic Site in the 1990s; it is now under the care of his grown children under the aegis of a State of Nevada Historic Site Restoration Project, and is partially open to the public for self-guided tours.[4]Frank Van Zant has been the subject of two short documentaries.[5] Wikipedia](https://images.trvl-media.com/place/6053763/47a95973-a5b1-4b92-92ff-98f511d0bbd0.jpg?impolicy=fcrop&w=512&h=288&q=medium)
