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The Historic Ovens We took a detour and took different path home to check out another state park. We drove for another two hours on US-93 from the Cathedral Gorge to Ely and visited the huge kilns at Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park. Ward Charcoal Ovens is located approximately 18 miles southeast of Ely and we had to drive through 10 miles of dirt road on Cave Valley Road to the parking lot. Just follow the signs to the park. The charcoal ovens has an interesting history. Silver ore was discovered here in 1872. The beehive-shaped ovens were built to replace an older system of producing charcoal. They were huge and cool inside (literally!). It was brrrr! during our visit on Thanksgiving weekend. The kilns operated from 1876-1879 and finally phased out when all the ore deposits were exhausted and when there was no more wood to burn (I feel sad about this... it takes a long time to grow trees!). Just imagine how much wood was needed to fill the ovens. The ovens are 30-ft high and 27-ft in diameter at the base. Wood was cut into 5-foot to 6-foot lengths and stacked inside the ovens vertically using the lower door. Aah, anyway, it's all part of Nevada's history now. The park is open year round and has a $5.00 fee (per car) at the entrance. Pay at the self-pay fee station. There is an additional fee if you want to camp at the site. The park has one trail system that covers each end of the park. We were the only ones at the park at the time. There are restrooms (pit toilets) near the parking lot. Review #2032
Mood- History How neat is it that we still have access to prowl around things from long ago. To learn a history that really isn't talked about, and to really indulge in some amazing scenery and landscape. Well this is the place to delight all of those fancies at the same time. I chose this adventure as getting out and roadtripping is my thing. On this particular day we got the chance to play in the snow and go 4x as I wanted to take the long dirt trail from the road opposed to cutting time and utilizing the freeway. These 6 ovens that remain were used in 1876-1879. They were an efficient way to extract Silver Ore. The ovens themselves are 30 feet tall and 27 feet wide. The ovens were crafted from quartz latite welded tuff by Italian masons. Their specialty was crafting ovens and they were often referred to as Carbonari. When the ovens were no longer in use due to lack of timber and severely depleted supply of deposits - The Martin & White Company from San Francisco shut down the operations. The ovens then began their next chapter of use serving as shelter. Prospectors to people on the Lam were notoriously found seeking shelter at the ovens as the temperatures were quite cold and rugged. In 1956 The C.B. Land and Cattle Company of Ely worked with Nevada State Park Commission by providing a special use permit to preserve the ovens. In 1971 the ovens were listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1994 park facilities began to be added to the grounds. Would def recommend - the pricing is reasonable. Plus they have a self service stamper for your park passport should you choose. In addition there is a campers restroom here. Be mindful of the ovens as they have suffered a bit over the years and preserving history is most important. This park offers camping, hiking, trailings, mountain biking, and picnic areas. Location is Ely Nevada - ample parking
Only 16 miles out of Ely, Nv. are the charcoal ovens. Doesn't sound like much, right? Wrong! It's a beautiful place full of history and amazingly well preserved. You will be traveling over a dirt/gravel road, but any car can make the drive. Now these are not small little ovens. Each one holds 35 cords of wood. (For those of you that don't know, a cord is 4' tall x 4' wide x 8' long times 35.) That's a lot of wood chopping & stacking! AND there are 6 ovens. Their history is amazing!
I have been to charcoal ovens in Wildrose in Death Valley. There are also the remnants of some near Pahrump, Nevada that have been terribly vandalized and there's nothing much to see now. On my to do list when I visited Ely, Nevada was to make a trip to the Ward Charcoal Ovens. This is one of the most pristine sites for charcoal ovens that were used by miners to smelt their ore. Ward is about 11 miles south of Ely and is gotten to by another 7 mile dirt road. Plan on getting your car washed when you get back. High clearance is not needed. I parked and walked up to look in the ovens and mentally compare them to what I had seen in Death Valley. Each oven is 27 feet in diameter and 30 feet high. These were used only from 1876 to 1879 and the stats on the interpretive markers about the amount of pine and juniper needed to fill one of these is stunning. After checking out the insides and reading the interpretive markers, I went for a short hike on the Willow Creek Trail. If you come here, take time to do a hike. There are very short ones and it makes your understanding of the location much better. A marvelous part of mining and Nevada history!
The Ward Charcoal Ovens are pieces of the past that have been abandoned. It began as a way to make charcoal to use in silver smelters but eventually they got run out of business due to declining timber availability. Afterwards this became a place to spend the night for whoever decided to until stagecoach bandits began using them as shelter. After a while this land became operated by ranchers until the state of Nevada purchased it. Today you can safely visit these ovens. They were built in a similar manner to many Native American homes. These ovens have an opening at the top to allow smoke to travel through as well as two different entrances. The one at ground level was for removing the contents of what they had burnt and the one a bit higher was for putting wood in to burn. We have been here before years ago. Each time that we came we were the only ones here. It's not a very popular place. It could be because it is out of the way but it is worth your time.
When I'm in Las Vegas I can't help but be reminded of the Nevada that exists far away from the epicenter of the strip. I was reminded of that this week as I thought of the Ward charcoal ovens in Ely. Used until about 1879, the ovens were used to burn wood and turn the pieces into charcoal that would later be used at a nearby silver refinery. I've visited the ovens a few times and on my last stop, during the winter, it was an almost spiritual experience because standing in the stone honeycomb of an oven on a still winter day is like being alone in a cathedral. It's an echo chamber and every movement and breath is amplified. It's a strange experience. There aren't many charcoal ovens remaining in the southwest and these ovens seem to be the best preserved. If you're driving the lonely roads around Ely, take a break at the ovens.
A fun little stop outside of Ely, NV. If ever driving on highway 50 (the loneliest road) this is a must! Beware there is a short 7 mile drive on unpaved road but it was not too bad in my AWD SUV - just a little dusty. There's a small fee for the park but not a big deal for me since I'm happy to support the national and state parks!
Spiritual experiences can happen anywhere... Step into one of these charcoal ovens and it feels like you're in a cathedral. Take your time and enjoy having a relaxing and beautiful moment and think about whatever makes you happy. This place is truly special and the ovens themselves are very cool but this park also offers so much more. Hiking trails, picnic tables, creeks, wildlife, mountains and beautiful scenery in all directions. We took a few hours to explore this park and very glad we did. The trails are really beautiful and if you're a nature lover you'll enjoy this place in the middle of nowhere. Located about 10-15 from the town of Ely NV it's a great little escape from the real world. This is a state park & they ask that you pay $7 per person to visit or $5 if you're a NV resident. I love this type of stuff as it's very unique so I don't mind helping to preserve history & beauty.
I went with a friend to the Ward Charcoal Ovens State Park both at night and in the daytime and both times it was really fun! There's a campground where you can pay $15 and stay overnight, which we will do next time we come here. At night it is gorgeous! Pitch black and you can see every star in the sky. During the day you can see the charcoal ovens and they are really cool! Good learning experience.
A side journey worth the time to take. About 10 miles down a easy to travel, gravel road ends right at the Charcoal Ovens State park. There is a fee of $5 but it is worth it if you are interested in hiking a bit and checking out all the beautiful aspects of the area. I stopped by the creek and had lunch on the bridge. Loved the sound of the water while I took a break. Lots of birds and bugs about to view. It was also easy to see the area has game that comes to the area. I saw different prints of different animals. Plenty of signs about during the guided nature walk.
Incredible area to stop And see History! The ovens are so interesting as well as great photo opps! Each on is different. There is a path to part of the way and ground stable enough for a stroller a wheelchair would Work too and it's a very short walk to the ovens. I loved the detail of the bricks and the orange moss growing out of them. The whole area is beautiful. Definitely worth a stop. read more
What a historic and educational stop this was for us. Back in Pandemic 2020, my husband and I traveled up through Northern Nevada and this park was on our list of places to see. It's about 7 miles from the town of Ely and very easy to access. We were the only people out here at the time so it was perfect. There is a fee of $5 to pay. There are six bee hive shaped charcoal ovens which were highly used from 1876 - 1879 to help process the silver ore that was discovered in this area. The Egan mountain range hosts the ovens and it's just a beautiful park. Once the mining ended, the ovens were used as a shelter for travelers and sometimes a hide out for bandits on the loose. The park features camping, picnicking, hiking, mountain biking and fishing. Lots of wild life her including mule deer and elk. We hiked around a bit and just took in the sights and sounds of this wonderful place. Definitely worth a stop should you be traveling this way. read more
5 years ago
As soon as we decided that we'd be staying in Ely, we started looking up what to do there. An image search, for example, yields loads of examples of these beehive looking things in the desert. We looked into it, and it turned out to be this state historic park. We put it on the list of possibilities, and even after we got to town and picked up some brochures and magazines, we kept seeing them. As luck would have it, we ended up having some time one evening and decided to make the trek out. It was getting a little later in the day, and we exited the highway to take the 10-mile dirt road into the parking area. We parked, and made our way up the walkway to the main attraction. I was pretty darn happy about our decision. After seeing them online so many times, it was pretty cool to see the ovens in person. We walked along the row and I felt the need to walk into each one. The thing I noticed most of all was how the acoustics inside are such that the noise of you crunching the gravel beneath you enters your ears as if the sound was coming from above. Pretty trippy. We took the time to read the info and imagined how much timber they would have burned through to make charcoal like that day in and day out. Truly incredible, but also so devastating. There are other hikes you can take there, but my guess is that they are not often traveled. I think there's a campsite nearby, so perhaps if you camped here you could see what that's all about and explore those trails. It started getting dark and we shifted into phase two of our visit--stargazing. Since you're a bit outside of Ely (and Ely isn't exactly the biggest town) you really get an incredible view of a dark sky. There's one industrial *something* across the valley with very bright lights that really distracts, but beyond that it's dark as dark can be. One star, two, then twenty, then thousands. You can see the Milky Way. If you're an ace astronomer, bring your laser pointer and share the names of constellations. I will be thinking about that night for a while. When times get tough, I'll go back there in my mind. I'll be there again--laying in the parking lot, looking up at an infinite sky where nothing is ruined and everything is both unfathomably complex and then pure and simple, all at once. I'll be there again, a short distance from where men built domes in the desert, and light years from where ancient stars beam light down to two gazing kids on a blanket, and I dunno, when I do that, I think everything will be alright. read more
The Historic Ovens We took a detour and took different path home to check out another state park. We drove for another two hours on US-93 from the Cathedral Gorge to Ely and visited the huge kilns at Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park. Ward Charcoal Ovens is located approximately 18 miles southeast of Ely and we had to drive through 10 miles of dirt road on Cave Valley Road to the parking lot. Just follow the signs to the park. The charcoal ovens has an interesting history. Silver ore was discovered here in 1872. The beehive-shaped ovens were built to replace an older system of producing charcoal. They were huge and cool inside (literally!). It was brrrr! during our visit on Thanksgiving weekend. The kilns operated from 1876-1879 and finally phased out when all the ore deposits were exhausted and when there was no more wood to burn (I feel sad about this... it takes a long time to grow trees!). Just imagine how much wood was needed to fill the ovens. The ovens are 30-ft high and 27-ft in diameter at the base. Wood was cut into 5-foot to 6-foot lengths and stacked inside the ovens vertically using the lower door. Aah, anyway, it's all part of Nevada's history now. The park is open year round and has a $5.00 fee (per car) at the entrance. Pay at the self-pay fee station. There is an additional fee if you want to camp at the site. The park has one trail system that covers each end of the park. We were the only ones at the park at the time. There are restrooms (pit toilets) near the parking lot. Review #2032 read more
5 years ago
Mood- History How neat is it that we still have access to prowl around things from long ago. To learn a history that really isn't talked about, and to really indulge in some amazing scenery and landscape. Well this is the place to delight all of those fancies at the same time. I chose this adventure as getting out and roadtripping is my thing. On this particular day we got the chance to play in the snow and go 4x as I wanted to take the long dirt trail from the road opposed to cutting time and utilizing the freeway. These 6 ovens that remain were used in 1876-1879. They were an efficient way to extract Silver Ore. The ovens themselves are 30 feet tall and 27 feet wide. The ovens were crafted from quartz latite welded tuff by Italian masons. Their specialty was crafting ovens and they were often referred to as Carbonari. When the ovens were no longer in use due to lack of timber and severely depleted supply of deposits - The Martin & White Company from San Francisco shut down the operations. The ovens then began their next chapter of use serving as shelter. Prospectors to people on the Lam were notoriously found seeking shelter at the ovens as the temperatures were quite cold and rugged. In 1956 The C.B. Land and Cattle Company of Ely worked with Nevada State Park Commission by providing a special use permit to preserve the ovens. In 1971 the ovens were listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1994 park facilities began to be added to the grounds. Would def recommend - the pricing is reasonable. Plus they have a self service stamper for your park passport should you choose. In addition there is a campers restroom here. Be mindful of the ovens as they have suffered a bit over the years and preserving history is most important. This park offers camping, hiking, trailings, mountain biking, and picnic areas. Location is Ely Nevada - ample parking read more
5 years ago
Only 16 miles out of Ely, Nv. are the charcoal ovens. Doesn't sound like much, right? Wrong! It's a beautiful place full of history and amazingly well preserved. You will be traveling over a dirt/gravel road, but any car can make the drive. Now these are not small little ovens. Each one holds 35 cords of wood. (For those of you that don't know, a cord is 4' tall x 4' wide x 8' long times 35.) That's a lot of wood chopping & stacking! AND there are 6 ovens. Their history is amazing! read more
I have been to charcoal ovens in Wildrose in Death Valley. There are also the remnants of some near Pahrump, Nevada that have been terribly vandalized and there's nothing much to see now. On my to do list when I visited Ely, Nevada was to make a trip to the Ward Charcoal Ovens. This is one of the most pristine sites for charcoal ovens that were used by miners to smelt their ore. Ward is about 11 miles south of Ely and is gotten to by another 7 mile dirt road. Plan on getting your car washed when you get back. High clearance is not needed. I parked and walked up to look in the ovens and mentally compare them to what I had seen in Death Valley. Each oven is 27 feet in diameter and 30 feet high. These were used only from 1876 to 1879 and the stats on the interpretive markers about the amount of pine and juniper needed to fill one of these is stunning. After checking out the insides and reading the interpretive markers, I went for a short hike on the Willow Creek Trail. If you come here, take time to do a hike. There are very short ones and it makes your understanding of the location much better. A marvelous part of mining and Nevada history! read more
6 years ago
The Ward Charcoal Ovens are pieces of the past that have been abandoned. It began as a way to make charcoal to use in silver smelters but eventually they got run out of business due to declining timber availability. Afterwards this became a place to spend the night for whoever decided to until stagecoach bandits began using them as shelter. After a while this land became operated by ranchers until the state of Nevada purchased it. Today you can safely visit these ovens. They were built in a similar manner to many Native American homes. These ovens have an opening at the top to allow smoke to travel through as well as two different entrances. The one at ground level was for removing the contents of what they had burnt and the one a bit higher was for putting wood in to burn. We have been here before years ago. Each time that we came we were the only ones here. It's not a very popular place. It could be because it is out of the way but it is worth your time. read more
4 years ago
It was 29 min from our Hotel so me and my wife decided to visit the place. Any car can make it to this place because it's has a nice flat dirt road. We brought our dog with us. read more
When I'm in Las Vegas I can't help but be reminded of the Nevada that exists far away from the epicenter of the strip. I was reminded of that this week as I thought of the Ward charcoal ovens in Ely. Used until about 1879, the ovens were used to burn wood and turn the pieces into charcoal that would later be used at a nearby silver refinery. I've visited the ovens a few times and on my last stop, during the winter, it was an almost spiritual experience because standing in the stone honeycomb of an oven on a still winter day is like being alone in a cathedral. It's an echo chamber and every movement and breath is amplified. It's a strange experience. There aren't many charcoal ovens remaining in the southwest and these ovens seem to be the best preserved. If you're driving the lonely roads around Ely, take a break at the ovens. read more
Very nice, short stop on our trip. The Ovens are a cool part of Nevada history. The Willow Creek campground right near the Ovens was empty mid-week and has some nice spots. Looks like a great place for off-roading, lots of trails around and up into the nearby mountains. read more
A fun little stop outside of Ely, NV. If ever driving on highway 50 (the loneliest road) this is a must! Beware there is a short 7 mile drive on unpaved road but it was not too bad in my AWD SUV - just a little dusty. There's a small fee for the park but not a big deal for me since I'm happy to support the national and state parks! read more
5 years ago
Spiritual experiences can happen anywhere... Step into one of these charcoal ovens and it feels like you're in a cathedral. Take your time and enjoy having a relaxing and beautiful moment and think about whatever makes you happy. This place is truly special and the ovens themselves are very cool but this park also offers so much more. Hiking trails, picnic tables, creeks, wildlife, mountains and beautiful scenery in all directions. We took a few hours to explore this park and very glad we did. The trails are really beautiful and if you're a nature lover you'll enjoy this place in the middle of nowhere. Located about 10-15 from the town of Ely NV it's a great little escape from the real world. This is a state park & they ask that you pay $7 per person to visit or $5 if you're a NV resident. I love this type of stuff as it's very unique so I don't mind helping to preserve history & beauty. read more
7 years ago
I went with a friend to the Ward Charcoal Ovens State Park both at night and in the daytime and both times it was really fun! There's a campground where you can pay $15 and stay overnight, which we will do next time we come here. At night it is gorgeous! Pitch black and you can see every star in the sky. During the day you can see the charcoal ovens and they are really cool! Good learning experience. read more
5 years ago
This was very interesting and worth the effort to get there. From the hwy it's a 10 mile ride on a dirt road. There is a nice little hike at the ovens too. Worth the visit for sure read more
7 years ago
A side journey worth the time to take. About 10 miles down a easy to travel, gravel road ends right at the Charcoal Ovens State park. There is a fee of $5 but it is worth it if you are interested in hiking a bit and checking out all the beautiful aspects of the area. I stopped by the creek and had lunch on the bridge. Loved the sound of the water while I took a break. Lots of birds and bugs about to view. It was also easy to see the area has game that comes to the area. I saw different prints of different animals. Plenty of signs about during the guided nature walk. read more
8 years ago
Stopped by as the sun was setting. It was a very quiet setting well maintained and clean. Added some pics with a full moon. read more
7 years ago
While visiting Ely this was a cool place to check out!! They also have camp sites as well although my friend and I just went to check out the ovens. It was neat to be able to stand inside them. We also tried to check them out at night and even though we didn't see them because it was too dark it was nice to just look up at the sky and see the Milky Way and all the stars in the sky. read more
8 years ago
8 years ago
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1 year ago
Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park - hiking - Updated May 2026
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