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Highway 50 Revisited: America's Loneliest Road

Waittress Rouena Leonard cleans up inside T+D's Restaurant in Baker on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011.

Photo by Leila Navidi / Las Vegas Sun

Waittress Rouena Leonard cleans up inside T+D's Restaurant in Baker on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011.

Twenty-five years ago this summer, Life magazine named U.S. Highway 50, as it crosses Central Nevada, the loneliest road in America. A photo of a straight stretch of empty highway fixed it in the national imagination as a symbol of the state's vast emptiness. To mark the anniversary of the Life photo, columnist Patrick Coolican and photographer Leila Navidi drove the length of U.S. 50 in Nevada to examine issues important in the rural communities along the highway, meet its people and explore loneliness in the hyper-connected age.

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Columns by J. Patrick Coolican

August 17, 2011 · Enlarge »

August 17, 2011 · Enlarge »

August 17, 2011 · Enlarge »

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Loneliest Highway