To Pioche’s mining and Panaca’s farming, Caliente (pop. 1,100), 15 miles south, adds railroading. This small town was built around the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad tracks in the early 1900s, a short while before Las Vegas itself was founded. The Union Pacific Depot, which was built in 1923 and still gets Amtrak service on the Las Vegas–Salt Lake City line, is the nerve center of Caliente, being restored to house government offices and a local history and art gallery.

  The town supports two gas stations and a half dozen motels, the best of which is the Hot Springs Motel ($55; 775/726-3777), off US-93 on the north side of Caliente. Here your room comes with use of Roman baths, whose fire-hydrant faucets can fill the five-foot-square, four-foot-deep tubs in three minutes flat with scalding-hot 115°F water. Road food, however, is limited to two choices: the Knotty Pine coffee shop and casino (775/726-3194) at 690 Front Street, and the very pleasant Brandin’ Iron café (775/726-3164), across from the depot at 190 Clover Street.

  South from Caliente, US-93 bends due west for 43 miles. Newman Canyon just outside of town has high, sheer, smooth, volcanic-tuff walls similar to Rainbow Canyon’s. You twist and climb out of the canyon to cross the Delmar Range at Oak Springs Summit (6,237 feet), where the juniper trees are a welcome change from the low desert scrub. Beyond is an even rarer sight, not only for this highway but for any highway: a little interface zone in which the junipers grow right next to Joshua trees. This is the first indication of the change from Great Basin Desert, which lies to the north, to the front edge of the Mojave Desert, which spreads south and west. Pahroc Summit is next (just under 5,000 feet), then Six Mile Flat, and then Hiko, where Hwy-375 heads northwest to US-6 and Tonopah.