Modena is a very desolate town on the edge of the Great Basin in northern Nevada. While driving into the Great Basin from Cedar City, Utah I came upon this remote tiny community in the middle of the sagebrush plains. This is basically a ghost town with a dozen or so people still living there.
The town was established as a railroad water stop in 1899 by the Utah and Nevada Railway. Water supplied from the nearby Desert Springs made the location an obvious choice for a railroad depot where steam powered locomotives could refill their water tanks.
As a newly establish freight depot it became so successful that by the early 1900's merchants from as far away a Mesquite, Nevada and St. George, Utah would either travel to Modena to pick up goods shipped by rail or get their good delivered by the Lund Freight service. Because the journey was arduous and took a lot of time to travel across the dirt roads of the time, in December of 1899, Brigham J. Lund, along with two partners, E. M. Brown and Jose Price, started a small business venture there to haul freight by wagon to these remote areas.
Then in 1903 Mr. Lund bought out his partners and built a General Merchandise & Hotel to service the haulers and local ranchers that were now springing up around the train depot. The image above shows all that remains of the long abandoned store and hotel.
Modena never was more than a tiny railroad stop. In the first official census taken there in 1910, it had a population of 49 people. Slowly over the next few decades it grew until reaching its maximum population level of 175 people in 1940.
However the community suffered the same eventual fate as all water-stop railroad towns when two historic technology developments sealed its fate with the short time span of two decades; First the invention of diesel locomotive engines (which did not require water), meant that the towns water supply was of no longer any use to the operation of the trains, so they no longer needed to stop there.
And then the development of the automobile and trucks for hauling freight, followed by the rapid expansion of paved roads across the remote countryside by 1923 which insured that the basic services the town had provided were now effectively rendered obsolete.
Slowly the town's population dwindled until as we see today there is but a handful of folks who still occupy this semi-ghost town. There have been some attempts to revive the area, such as we see above in the refurbishing of the old 2 room school house which now serves as a very small library for the few people living in the area.
I love finding these old remote towns and when I am not flying across these vast stretches of unpopulated wild lands I always go out of my way to take the back roads. It is only here you will find such amazing old places such as Modena.
I will leave you with this image I took while way out on the outskirts of the area around Modena. I passed it and then had to turn around to make certain I saw it correctly! Yes this is a horse eating tree bark. Apparently they will eat bark when they don't get enough nutrition from the hay they are being fed. I have been around horses a lot and I had never witnessed this. He stopped eating when I got out and started taking his photo. Guess he just wanted to pose for the camera!
I lensed these images while driving and exploring this awe-inspiring wilderness area for my ongoing project, "Where Eagles Fly".
About The Project
Where Eagles Fly - The American Wilderness Expedition is my personal mission to introduce people to these amazing locations that surround us. I am piloting a bush plane while exploring and filming throughout the remote back-country areas of North America to raise awareness of the 47% of the USA and 90% of Canada that remain unpopulated wilderness.
About The Author
My name is Zedekiah Morse and I'm a Bush Pilot, Photographer, Explorer and Filmmaker. I live in the Rocky Mountains and devote my time and resources to exploring as much of the world as I can by air. If you wish to watch a short film detailing how I do my work and this project, go here.
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