Vya is a small

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 ...

located in Washoe County, in northwestern

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 ...

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. It is about east of the

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

state line, north of Forty Nine Canyon. Not much remains of the small town, which essentially died in the

1920s File:1920s decade montage.png, From left, clockwise: Third Tipperary Brigade Flying Column No. 2 under Seán Hogan during the Irish War of Independence; Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol in accordance to the Eighteenth Amendment to ...

. Just two wooden buildings can still be seen—the Vya Post Office and Library. The Vya Post Office was in operation from September 1910 until October 1941. The settlement was named for Vya Wimer, the first European heritage baby born in the valley. The vicinity of Vya has since evolved into the Old Yella Dog Ranch, a working

guest ranch A guest ranch, also known as a dude ranch, is a type of ranch oriented towards visitors or tourism. It is considered a form of agrotourism. History Guest ranches arose in response to the romanticization of the American West that began to occur ...

, with facilities for RVs and camping. There had been no agricultural interest in Vya and the surrounding area until the Enlarged Homestead Act where 320 acres were given to farmers. A post office opened in 1910, and a school and store were built in 1915. Long Valley Land and Development had plans to construct an

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering of plants) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has bee ...

system and

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

fed by lakes east of Vya. This project was never completed, so there was no stable water supply for the households. Despite wet years when farming in the area commenced, drought in the early 1920s led to crop failure and most of the town was abandoned. The population had dropped to fifty by the

1940 United States census The 1940 United States census, conducted by the United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 132,164,569, an increase of 7.6 percent over the 1930 United States Census, 1930 population ...

and the post office and school closed in 1941. In the winter of 1993, a young man named Jim Stolpa, his wife, and baby, became snowbound while driving through northern Nevada. After an almost 30-hour, walk, Stolpa was found near Vya. The Stolpas' ordeal was made into a movie, '' Snowbound: The Jim and Jennifer Stolpa Story.''

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* {{Authority control Ghost towns in Washoe County, Nevada

See also

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