She would go on to spend the next few years fixing the place up, creating sets and a stage… and painting her audience on the walls and ceiling. Peering through the keyhole into a then-defunct social hall her vision started to take shape. The story goes, Becket’s vehicle broke down at this legendary Death Valley junction in the 1960s, and she fell in love with the place so much that she settled in for good. That is, until Marta Becket came into the picture.

Designed by architect Alexander Hamilton McCulloch, the northeast end of the building was used as a common area, to host community dances, church services, and even movie screenings.

When it first opened, the u-shaped layout of this property hosted company offices, a hotel, and social room, lobby area, store, and dormitory designed to accommodate 23 Pacific Coast Borax miners.

As an aside, Borax isn’t just a brand name - it’s the name of an element that’s found in abundance in this corner of the west: borax sodium, and it’s used for everything from household cleaners to moisturizers to toothpaste. In the heart of Amargosa Valley, this Spanish Colonial Revival architectural style building was first established in 1923, and built to support a company town staffing the Pacific Coast Borax Company in nearby Death Valley. There’s no better place to embrace an honorary dose of Weird Nevada than the barely-over-the-border Amargosa Opera House, whose late proprietress Marta Becket performed ballet and opera to a painted audience, and anyone who showed up to visit nearby Death Valley National Park for more than 40 years.

Can you think of a more Weird Nevada appropriate story, especially one that’s 100 percent true? A Broadway dancer breaks down in the desert, converts a pioneer old stage stop into her performing venue, and proceeds to paint her audience around her. If you were writing a Hollywood script about a dusty, Western outpost and the quirky characters who inhabited it, you couldn’t do better than the story of the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction, situated along the Nevada-California border at the gateway to Death Valley National Park.

Amargosa opera house cafe