A few years ago, I took an enormous trip through Nevada.

It was more than a thousand miles over five days with 50 different stops.

And along the way, we knew that there was one place we had to visit, a motel, in the

middle of Nevada desert, on the edge of an old frontier town between Reno and Las Vegas.

It was a little bit of a rough and tumble place.

It had a pretty dusty vibe, but it only cost about 30 bucks a night to stay there.

The main clientele were truckers and bikers, and it sits right at the edge of the desert,

right before there's just kind of nothing.

Make sure sort of the baits motel, low slung doors open directly to the parking lot, and

the first thing you see when you step outside your room, other than the highway, is the

abandoned minor cemetery right next door.

And there's one more thing about this motel, and it was the reason that I knew I had to

stay there.

It's a clown motel.

Ones in a lobby, clowns in the rooms, clowns watching your every move.

Undone theorist, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange and

wondrous places.

Today, we visit Tonapana, Nevada, and we stay at the clown motel.

The old Tonapas cemetery is just about the last stop in town.

It's a dry, pretty bare bones place, no grass, no trees in sight.

The people buried here died of grim frontier town causes.

People got shot, they died of tuberculosis, a strained disease swept through town, known

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