The Town of Gerlach

I can’t let it go. I have to find out more.
How in the heck do residents of Gerlach support themselves?

Granted, there are only 499 of them. Maybe they’re up to 540 now with the present average population growth rate of 1.1% a year. But what do they do all year long? Does the work related to the 8-day BM festival actually sustain them? What else are they doing? Back to the trusty Wikipedia, which tells me that gypsum mining, tourism from BRC and hunting are the economies that support this settlement. Tourism…got it; hunting…explains the taxidermists; but gypsum mining…what’s that?

The contributors to Wikipedia are going to town on this one but like a text book, it’s telling me nothing that means anything to me. Gypsum is: A common mineral; associated to sedimentary rocks; word derived from a Greek verb. Blah Blah Blah. Uses of Gypsum…here we go.

Drywall and plaster!!

That’s it! That’s exactly what this dust feels like. That’s why there’s that chalky, white film on my skin. It’s as if I took a piece of drywall and broke out the material from between the paper, crumbled it in my hands, then rubbed it all over my body and all through my hair. And that’s why wet playa looks so familiar. It looks like the plaster I used when trying to fix that leak in my basement. It makes total sense now!

Eww…it’s also an ingredient in Twinkies