Elko County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Elko County

Seventeen thousand one hundred eighty-one square miles makes Elko the fourth-largest county by area in the United States — larger than nine entire US states (Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont each have a smaller land area per US Census TIGER summary). Every January since 1985, the Western Folklife Center has hosted the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in downtown Elko town — a 7,000-attendee weeklong winter festival drawing working cowboys, sheepherders, ranch hands, and poets from every Western cattle-country state and from the Australian Outback and the Argentinian Pampas per Western Folklife Center participant data 2024. The Ruby Mountains (peaking at Ruby Dome 11,387 ft) hold what locals and the Forest Service jointly call 'the Yosemite of Nevada' — Lamoille Canyon, a 12-mile glacially-carved U-shaped valley with a paved scenic-byway road that climbs from 6,500 ft at the Powerhouse Picnic Area to 8,800 ft at the Roads End trailhead.

Thomas Canyon USFS Campground inside Lamoille Canyon accepts rigs to 30 ft on 40 sites with no hookups, with reservations through recreation.gov opening 6 months out and August dates routinely selling out within minutes. The Jarbidge Wilderness in the county's northern corner is the most remote wilderness area in the contiguous Lower 48 per Wilderness Connect's remoteness index, with the closest paved road 25+ miles from any trailhead access. Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest (the largest national forest outside Alaska at 6.3 million acres, spanning Nevada and eastern California per USDA Forest Service Region 4 records) permits 14-day dispersed camping on most public-land roads with rigs to 30 ft accommodated; the Ruby Lake NWR east of the Ruby Mountains operates a 14-day-max primitive boat-launch campground. The Western Shoshone tribe holds the Te-Moak Tribes' Elko Band Colony and the South Fork Reservation inside the county. I-80 runs east-west through Elko town (population 20,564, the county seat and Nevada's largest non-Las-Vegas / non-Reno city) and is the principal year-round through-route; US-93 north from Wells crosses into Idaho's Twin Falls County at the Jackpot border crossing.