RENO, Nev. (KOLO) – Nevada right-handed pitcher Jason Doktorczyk was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the ninth round of the 2024 MLB Draft.

Doktorczyk was drafted with the 278th pick of Monday’s draft.

Doktorczyk is Nevada’s eighth MLB draft pick since 2019 and the third pitcher over the last two seasons. Kade Morris and Peyton Stumbo were drafted by the New York Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates respectively last year.

Over the course of two years at Nevada, Doktorczyk struck out 150 batters over 148.1 innings, picking up eight wins. He also posted a strikeout-to-walk ration of 4:1 over 25 career appearances and posted an ERA of 3.21.

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Amidst the vast desert landscapes and iconic sagebrush, Nevada’s small towns are waiting to be discovered, offering a blend of charm and quirkiness, with a dash of frontier spirit. Imagine stepping back in time where Main Street is lined with historic saloons, antique shops, and locals who greet visitors like old friends. From the ghostly whispers of Virginia City to the relaxing resorts of Mesquite, each town tells its own tale, promising a three-day weekend in 2024 filled with unexpected delights and the kind of adventures that the family will reminisce about for years to come. So, pack light, fuel up, and get out there to uncover the authentic heart of Nevada’s small-town magic.

Boulder City

When looking for a weekend destination, Boulder City is a perfect starting point. The Hoover Dam offers guided tours and a visitor center for a deep dive into the dam’s complex engineering. Lake Mead provides endless opportunities for boating, fishing, and swimming. The Nevada State Railroad Museum takes guests on historic train rides, making them feel like they have traveled back in time, while Hemenway Park is where travelers can spot bighorn sheep while enjoying a picnic. Staying at the Boulder Dam Hotel adds a touch of old-world elegance to any visitor’s trip, while the Boulder City Art Guild entertains by showcasing local artistic talent.

Ely

In Ely, the Nevada Northern Railway Museum offers a journey through time with its historic train rides and exhibits. Garnet Hill is a hotspot for rockhounding enthusiasts eager to find their own garnets. Ely Renaissance Village presents preserved historic buildings, maintaining the town’s original spirit through the passing decades. Visitors can stay at the Hotel Nevada & Gambling Hall, featuring one of the many casinos to be found in town.

Great Basin National Park is also close to town, with hiking trails, Lehman Caves tours, and exceptional stargazing. Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park lets you explore 19th-century charcoal ovens, and the Ely Art Bank is a hub for local art displays and community events, rounding out a culturally rich visit.

Winnemucca

Winnemucca provides a blend of history and outdoor adventure, and a diverse selection of entertainment for visitors from all over. The Humboldt Museum features exhibits on local history and culture and the Buckaroo Hall of Fame gallops into rodeo history with fascinating exhibits. For outdoor activity the Water Canyon Recreation Area is ideal for hiking, picnicking, and spotting wildlife, while Vesco City Park is perfect for family outings, with sports facilities and open spaces. Hosting a thrilling experience in an unexpected location, the Winnemucca Sand Dunes are great for off-roading and sandboarding. To cap off the days Model T Casino offers gaming, accommodation, and dining options, making it a fun spot to unwind after a day of exploring.

Pahrump

For a delightful myriad of activities, Pahrump is the pick that does not disappoint. Start with the Pahrump Valley Winery for wine tastings and vineyard tours. Sanders Family Winery is another stop for enjoying local wines and special events. For a different kind of excitement, Front Sight Firearms Training Institute provides comprehensive firearms courses. Racing enthusiasts can head to Spring Mountain Motor Resort for thrilling racing courses and events.

The Pahrump Nugget Hotel and Casino combines gaming, dining, and entertainment for a lively evening, as well as a comfortable place to stay while you take in the joys of the town. Lastly, Lake Spring Mountain offers water sports and a relaxing environment, perfect for winding down your weekend.

Virginia City

The Virginia & Truckee Railroad provides a journey back in time with its historic train rides and tours, and is just one of the many things that make Virginia City well worth the visit. Explore some of the town’s mining history and artifacts at The Way It Was Museum. Piper’s Opera House continues to host historic performances and events, maintaining the town’s connection to it’s past as well as the arts.

Experience the Old West at the Bucket of Blood Saloon, featuring live music and a unique atmosphere. The Fourth Ward School Museum offers a glimpse into the educational past with its well-preserved exhibits. Don’t miss the Storey County Courthouse, where historic architecture and informative tours await. For accommodation guests can book rooms at the Silverland Inn, which boasts a casino, indoor pool area, and a bar.

Elko

Within Elko, the Western Folklife Center showcases cowboy poetry and cultural exhibits, celebrating the area’s expansion era traditions. Visit the Northeastern Nevada Museum for an inside look into local history and wildlife. Sherman Station features restored historic buildings and serves as a visitor center, providing a historical backdrop to any trip. Ruby View Golf Course is a public golf course offering stunning mountain views and for nature lovers, Lamoille Canyon presents scenic drives and hiking trails that highlight Nevada’s natural beauty. The Elko County Fairgrounds host annual fairs, rodeos, and various events, ensuring a lively experience that leaves guests collapsing into bed at Maverick Hotel and Casino by Red Lion Hotels.

Tonopah

If looking for a weekend with history and celestial wonders then Tonopah should be at the top of the list. Start with the Tonopah Historic Mining Park, where mining history and old equipment makes the past tangible and easy to imagine. The Central Nevada Museum presents even deeper insights into local history and its artifacts. As night falls, Tonopah Stargazing Park provides some of the darkest skies for stargazing in Nevada.

The Mizpah Hotel, famous for its ghost stories, offers tours that mix history with a bit of the supernatural, and an excellent place to stay for those not afraid of the things that go bump in the night. Renewable energy enthusiasts can visit the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project for a supercharged tour that is an experience found nowhere else. For a taste of the local flavor, the historic Tonopah Liquor Company bar has as many rich stories as it has drinks.

Mesquite

Mesquite offers a perfect blend of history, arts, and outdoor activities. Visitors can dive into the local history at the Virgin Valley Heritage Museum, where exhibits tell the story of the area. Golfers will appreciate the challenge and beauty of Wolf Creek Golf Club, a championship course, while Mesquite Fine Arts Gallery showcases local art, making it a must-visit for art lovers. For a bit of excitement, the Eureka Casino Resort combines gaming, dining, and entertainment. The Virgin River is great for boating, fishing, and various water sports. Motocross fans can head to Mesquite Motocross Park, which hosts thrilling racing events and competitions. There is always something to do in Mesquite.

Fallon

Fallon is a small town with a variety of attractions perfect for a three-day weekend. The Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon provides an opportunity to learn about US naval aviation with its exhibits. At Grimes Point, visitors can explore ancient petroglyphs and archaeological sites, and the Churchill County Museum delves into local history with extensive exhibits. For comfort and familiarity, the Holiday Inn Express is a great place to spend the nights. The Oats Park Arts Center offers a vibrant arts scene with its exhibitions and performances. For outdoor enthusiasts, Lahontan State Recreation Area is ideal for boating, fishing, and camping, while bird watchers and nature lovers will find the nearby Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge a hotspot for wildlife viewing.

In Nevada’s small towns, every street corner hides a story, every diner gives a sample of local flavor, and every sunset paints the sky in hues that even Instagram filters can not fully capture. These towns offer a getaway that is as refreshing as a dip in Lake Tahoe and as captivating as a midnight stroll under the stars. So, when you plan your three-day weekend escape for 2024, remember that in Nevada’s small towns, the adventure is not just in the destination it is woven into the very experience itself.

AMARGOSA, Nev.—Eight thousand years.

That’s roughly how long it takes for snowmelt from Mount Charleston, north of Las Vegas, to reach the aquifer in the Amargosa Basin and Death Valley—the hottest and driest corner of the United States. The temperatures are among the hottest on Earth, with Death Valley potentially setting a world record of over 130 degrees Fahrenheit this summer. Rain is scarce, just a few inches a year in the basin. Its namesake river largely runs dry on the surface, the water hidden underground. The only sign of life across much of the valley adjacent to Death Valley National Park is the sea of creosote bushes, but islands of mesquite and cottonwood trees hide pools of water bluer than the sky above. 

And despite the harsh conditions, those scattered springs, streams and seeps have made this place—Ash Meadows—one of the most biodiverse places in the world. Often called the “Galapagos of the Mojave,” at least 26 endemic species here are found nowhere else, including the rarest fish in the world, the Devil’s Hole pupfish, which lives in a water-filled cavern where the temperature exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Many species here have long teetered on the brink of extinction. Human activity in the later half of the 20th century nearly dried up the water supply vital to the area’s plants and animals until the Endangered Species Act, a Supreme Court decision and conservationists saved Ash Meadows by limiting groundwater pumping by local ranchers to maintain water levels critical to the endangered pupfish, eventually designating Ash Meadows as a wildlife refuge in the 1980s. 

That turned the pupfish into a hated pest for many area residents, as protecting it and other wildlife stopped development and economic opportunities faded away. But this past year, a new threat emerging just outside Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge transformed the fish from a villain to a hero.

Pickets across the valley mark mining claims to explore for lithium, the mineral critical to batteries for electricity vehicles and storage of the energy from wind and solar projects. Now, a broad coalition of residents, environmentalists, tribes and local leaders are counting on the Endangered Species Act, the refuge and the pupfish to save them from a proposed mine that they fear will further deplete their scarce water resources, threatening the life that has found a way to thrive in the hottest place in the world.

“We want to save Ash Meadows, but Ash Meadows is going save us,” said Carolyn Allen, chair of the Amargosa Valley Town Board, who is helping lead the fight against proposed mining activity.

Water has always been a priority, she said. Already, the aquifer is seeing too much groundwater pumping, putting the endangered species and community here at risk of extinction. Residents’ wells are running dry, spitting out nothing but sand, and a fix would cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

“It’s the desert,” she said. “Water is the lifeblood of everything.”

Exploratory Drilling and Endangered Species

No more than 1,500 feet away from the refuge’s northernmost spring, where on a hot summer day, schools of the colorful endangered Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish and Ash Meadows Amargosa speckled dace swam, is a playa with a butte filled with lithium that’s attracted the attention of Rover Critical Minerals. The exploratory mining company is looking to drill in the area to research the potential for a mine here. But a study commissioned by the Nature Conservancy—which led the push in the ‘70s and ‘80s to create the refuge by buying up the land around Ash Meadows and transferring it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—found a mine in the area would cause the aquifer to drop 50 feet at the site of the dig, and between two and 30 feet throughout the entire refuge.

Rover was supposed to begin its exploratory drilling last summer, but the Bureau of Land Management, which controls roughly 95 percent of the land in the Amargosa Valley, approved the work without conducting an environmental review, leading the Amargosa Conservancy and Center for Biological Diversity to sue. The BLM pulled its approval of the project and began the review. But in May, locals awoke to claims staked right outside their homes. Rover also proposed exploring the mining potential farther from the refuge but closer to the town and Death Valley National Park.

The project is the latest in a series of environmental battles between mines seeking to dig minerals deemed critical for the renewable energy transition and communities and environmentalists opposing the projects due to their impacts on natural and cultural resources. But unlike many of those disputes, which typically pit mining companies, federal agencies and some local leaders against environmentalists and tribes, the Ash Meadows project has nearly zero local support.

The strange bedfellows Rover’s proposal has united in opposition are seeking action from Congress or the Biden administration to withdraw the area from mining development for 20 years. Coalition leaders and other local residents visited congressional representatives in Washington D.C. and officials in the Interior Department to discuss the options for protecting the area. A mineral withdrawal, which has drawn the support of environmentalists, town leaders, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, conservative Nye County and the state’s senators, would allow no new mining claims in the area, but existing claims would still be valid, meaning Rover’s project could continue. 

After the meetings in D.C., Mason Voehl, the executive director of the Amargosa Conservancy, an environmental group that has helped lead the push to protect the refuge and build the coalition, said they’ve pulled all the levers available to them and demonstrated the concerns of locals to those in charge. “This is about so much more than conservation,” Voehl said, highlighting the local water supplies at risk and the chance of more mining claims being filed before a mineral withdrawal takes place. 

While environmentalists and locals don’t often get along, Voehl said, the potential impacts of the mining proposed near Ash Meadows have made everyone realize the precariousness of the region’s water supply, and changed perspectives on the species the refuge was created to protect.

“There’s been a long history of resentment in these communities, of feeling like it was the Devil’s Hole pupfish that was holding them back from pursuing economic development,” Voehl said. “Now, because of this issue, the narrative is completely flipped. People are now saying ‘We’ve always hated the pupfish, but now it’s going to save us.’”

So far, representatives in D.C. and agency officials have expressed openness to taking action. On July 2, Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, Sen. Jacky Rosen and Reps. Steven Horsford, Susie Lee and Dina Titus, all Nevada Democrats, sent a letter to the Interior Department requesting it “expeditiously initiate and complete a 20-year mineral withdrawal” for 276,000 acres of public lands in the Amargosa Basin to protect the watershed, Ash Meadows, Death Valley and nearby communities. The proposed exploratory drilling and potential mine threatened “widespread catastrophic effects on this fragile landscape.”

Last month, Cortez-Masto asked BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning at a congressional hearing to commit to protecting Ash Meadows, which Stone-Manning agreed to visit, saying she would work with the community on the issue. 

“The fish there are being threatened by a proposal to drill into the sensitive groundwater which would dry up seeps and springs in the refuge,” Cortez-Masto said during the hearing. “Let me just say, every community leader that lives in that area, they’re unanimous the department move forward with a withdrawal as quickly as possible.”

A Mining Executive Appears

In June, almost a year after news of the proposed mining exploration project broke, Judson Culter, the CEO and founder of Rover Critical Minerals, stood before residents of the Amargosa Valley for the first time to walk through his company’s plan. 

The Canadian company had started as a gold exploration company, he said, but pivoted to critical minerals two years ago because of the “Cold War of economics” between the U.S. and China and the financial incentives for critical minerals like lithium. As an exploration company, he explained, Rover wasn’t interested in actually mining the area itself, but hoped to identify areas with high grades of the mineral that would be economical to extract, secure the permits to get it and then sell them to the highest bidding mining company. Rover is still early in that process, working to secure the permits needed to drill and test the area’s mining potential. The company, he said, is still six years away from a feasibility study of the economic viability of mining the Amargosa. 

Culter promised the exploratory drilling would not impact water supplies, as they’d only bore to 30 feet and employ a less invasive method to drill than typically used. But the company’s original plans called for drilling hundreds of feet into the aquifer, which environmentalists said posed the risk of water leaking out of the puncture. After residents questioned him, Culter conceded that they would drill until they hit water, even if it was deeper than 30 feet. Any mining company would largely mine the surface of the land, going down only 30 feet or so, he said, as that’s where they think the lithium is. Rover’s original plans, however, called for an open pit mine, which typically would be deeper. 

Despite Culter’s commitments, the more than 100 residents who showed up to the town hall remained skeptical, if not outright hostile to the idea of a mine in their community. Only two spoke in support, one of whom said most of them would be dead in 10 years, so it wouldn’t matter if the water was gone. 

Most of the rest had the same question: Of all places, why here? 

Culter said the company looks for places with the desired minerals and the resources to support a mine, like a town with a workforce. “We’re here to create jobs if we’re successful,” he said

But with wells already running dry in the community, most speakers feared what both the exploration and a potential mine could do to their water supply, even if the project did one day bring jobs. 

“Why allow these types of water-hungry companies to establish in our desert,” one resident asked. “The Western United States has been experiencing a mega-drought the last two decades. [The companies] have no emotional connection to this land and the people who live there. They do not care if the developments leave a wicked scar in the vicinity.”

“We’re all worried about our homes, our children, our water,” another resident told Culter, her voice rising with anger. “We live in the desert. Water is a necessity but you can’t answer these questions, because you’re not the one that’s going to be actually doing the drilling. You’re just the suit.”

Rover is close to finalizing a new plan of operations, Culter said, and he could come back when that’s made public and the community could vote on the project. Allen, the town manager, took him up on the offer. 

After the meeting, Culter told Inside Climate News that a vote would “make it a factual based process, not an emotional one.”

A local vote, however, would have no real impact on whether the exploration, or eventual mining, goes on or not. Approval for the project is up to the BLM, rather than the local government, as the project is on public land managed by the federal agency. Culter said he would have to take the vote to the company’s shareholders, which could choose not to pursue it in the face of strong local opposition, and he blamed environmentalists for creating a vocal minority against the project.

‘It’s About Survival’ 

As the nation pivots away from fossil fuels, few states will be as important to the renewable energy transition as Nevada. 

Massive solar farms will soon stretch across much of the Amargosa, with new transmission lines proposed to transport the energy to major metropolitan areas. Farther north is the only operating lithium mine in the U.S., but more are certainly on their way. 

In the U.S., mining is governed by the Mining Law of 1872, which made “all valuable mineral deposits in lands belonging to the United States … free and open to exploration and purchase.” To this day, all one needs to do to stake a mining claim is plant four stakes into the ground and file it. No royalties are paid for the minerals extracted from the lands owned by American taxpayers, something other extractive industries on federal lands like oil and gas developers are required to do. And Congress is actively considering legislation to make it even easier to mine. 

“You could swing a dead cat on the Nevada-California border and hit lithium anywhere.”

Due to the law’s language and age, it often supersedes other uses for the land or concerns about a mine. In the Silver State, where 80 percent of the land is public and managed by the federal government, the impact is evident, with mining long being the crux of the state’s economy.

Allen and Amargosa residents know Ash Meadows is what makes this fight different. The nearby sister city of Beatty has multiple gold mining projects in the works. Community leaders there, worried about their water and how the mines, solar and transmission lines will change their way of life, have joined the fight to save Ash Meadows by submitting letters in opposition to the mine and speaking out publicly against it at the recent town hall. The refuge, and its protections, make all the difference. Anywhere else, and a mine would likely be impossible to stop, they say. 

“You could swing a dead cat on the Nevada-California border and hit lithium anywhere,” Allen said, so why mine for it so close to Ash Meadows? Rural Nevada communities like hers are already bearing the brunt of the burden of the renewable energy transition, she said, noting her willingness to work with developers and federal and state agencies on solar and other developments for cleaner energy. 

But the mine, she said, threatens the livability of the community. The local dairy farm—the town’s largest employer and water user—is likely to close soon, its water potentially supplying the solar farms planned in the area, which often use it to mitigate dust. The community’s longevity is already questionable, but the mine would be its end, she fears. 

“It’s about our survival,” she said. “How many ghost towns do we have in Nevada? We don’t need any more.”