Contact is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Elko County Elko County is a county in the northeastern corner of Nevada, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 53,702. Its county seat is Elko. The county was established on March 5, 1869, from Lander County. Elko County is the fourth ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

, United States. It is located on a mineral-rich granite intrusion and there are many mines nearby.

History

A post office was established at Contact in 1897, and remained in operation until 1962. The name "Contact" is mining jargon. As of 1915, Contact had a hotel, restaurant and its own local newspaper. Although a new townsite was laid out in 1930, by that time the community was once again in decline. A devastating 1942 fire effectively turned Contact into a near-

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

. Today one of the main presences in Contact is a

Nevada Department of Transportation The Nevada Department of Transportation (Nevada DOT or NDOT) is a government agency in the U.S. state of Nevada. NDOT is responsible for maintaining and improving Nevada's highway system, which includes U.S. highways and Interstate highways with ...

maintenance station.

Jackpot

Located approximately 15 miles (13.3 km) south of Jackpot on

U.S. Route 93 U.S. Route 93 (US 93) is a major north–south U.S. Numbered Highway in the western United States, that connects U.S. Route 60 (US 60) in Wickenburg, Arizona, with British Columbia Highway 93 at the Canadian border (north of ...

, prior to Jackpot's founding in 1954 Contact was known as one of the closest Nevada settlements to the

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...

border. Early records of Cactus Pete's (then known as Cactus Pete's Desert Lodge) placed the property in Contact before Jackpot emerged as a separate settlement.

References

Unincorporated communities in Nevada Unincorporated communities in Elko County, Nevada Elko, Nevada micropolitan area Populated places established in the 1890s {{ElkoCountyNV-geo-stub