U.S. Route 50 America's loneliest route

There are a lot of very desolate highways in the west but Nevada has more than its fair share of them. Outside of the Reno/CC and Las Vegas metro areas, the biggest town in Nevada is Elko at 16,000 - and it's the only one with more than 10,000 people. Apply that to a state the size of Nevada and you start to get a handle on how desolate it really is outside of the two aforementioned metro areas.