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- A mining boom appears headed for the vast desert, and tiny Tonopah is counting on an economic lift.
- Harry Chahal, who owns a pizza place and motel in town, is fixing things up as he bets on a more prosperous future.
- Column is the latest in a series on ‘Trump’s America,’ which explores the lives and livelihoods of average Americans in the president’s second term.
TONOPAH, Nev. — Some years ago, Harry Chahal and his wife were on a trip to Las Vegas when, like countless motorists before and since, they passed through this high desert speck of a town.
Tonopah, built by the mining industry around 1900 and depleted as the gold, silver, lead and mercury petered out, is a remote way station about halfway between Reno and Las Vegas. Signs on either side warn — ominously, given the unforgiving expanse ahead — that once you’ve left, the nearest gas station is not for another 100 miles or so.
As he passed through town, Chahal noticed something missing: a pizza parlor.
Pizza is not generally associated with Punjab, India, where Chahal — given name Harvarinderjit — is originally from. But he learned how to make pizza, and how much customers loved gobbling it up, while working at different gas station mini-marts around rural Nevada.
In that absence, Chahal saw opportunity.
He and his wife, Ravinder, moved to Tonopah and in 2015 opened Hometown Pizza in a vacant building on U.S. Route 95, which runs through the heart of town. Ten years later, they bought the Dream Inn Motel, a 39-room operation just up the road.
Lately, Chahal has been sprucing up the motor inn: new cabinets, new furniture, fresh paint every few months. The reason is President Trump.
Tonopah and the surrounding desert, stretching farther than the eye can reckon, is verging on a boom, owing to vast reserves of lithium, boron and other sought-after materials and a Trump administration promise to turn the U.S., in the words of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, into “a mineral powerhouse once again.”
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Chahal, 40, is a repeat Trump voter and even though he has issues with some of what the president has done — he’s not happy about the war with Iran and inflation has taken a decent-sized bite out of his pizza business — he feels his faith in Republicans in general and Trump in particular have paid off.
A registered nonpartisan, Chahal is fairly apolitical. “I vote for Republicans because they’re better for business,” he said as a lunch-time crowd of locals and folks passing through tucked into the $11.99 pizza-and-salad buffet. Here’s proof: In the last year, Chahal said, he’s seen motel occupancy increase significantly, from around 15 rooms rented each night to 25 or more.
Those fresh touches to the Dream Inn are Chahal’s investment in the future and a belief that, with Trump in office, even better times lie ahead.
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For much of its being, Tonopah relied on metal, minerals and other valuables scooped from the earth. Today, government is the largest employer.
But mining continues to hold fast to the town’s imagination.
A headframe — that’s the tower built directly over an underground mine shaft — is part of Tonopah’s logo. Mining-related sculptures, including statues of Jim and Belle Butler, who staked the first claim in the 20th century silver rush, dot the main thoroughfare. The high school’s athletes are called the “Muckers,” after those who shovel ore into underground rail cars.
The Tonopah Historic Mining Park is a big tourist attraction, along with the Clown Motel and other lodging establishments supposedly haunted by the ghosts of dead miners and other paranormal phenomena. (Chahal says there are no apparitions at the Dream Inn.)
Lately, however, mining is becoming more than just a part of nostalgic lore. It’s poised to again be a major boon to the local economy and the town’s 3,000 residents.
Plans are underway for a new lithium and boron mine at Rhyolite Ridge, approximately 30 miles southwest of Tonopah, in Nevada’s Silver Peak Range. (Lithium, most of which is now imported, is a vital ingredient in the batteries that store solar energy and power electric vehicles; boron is used, among other things, for bulletproof armor and vests.)
About 27 miles to the south of Tonopah, near the town of Goldfield, a new gold mine is set to open in 2028.
Joe Westerlund, Tonopah’s town manager, said fresh development and the prospect of hundreds of new, good-paying jobs are much welcomed. The median income here is about $37,000 annually, less than half the state average. The hospital in town closed in 2015. Venture off U.S. 95 and the rolling hills are flecked with weathered miner’s cottages and tumbledown homes no longer fit for habitation.
(A three-bedroom, two-bath home in a comfy subdivision on the north end of town can be had for around $250,000, but don’t hurry over to buy; inventory is low and could grow even leaner if demand for housing increases.)
While some of the groundwork for the mining resurgence was laid during the Biden administration, Trump is credited with fostering a much friendlier regulatory environment, which promises even more opportunities for extraction.
“As soon as he got into office, things started loosening up. We had 15 drill rigs,” said Westerlund, who has lived in Tonopah since 1972. “I had never seen that before in my life.”
There are, of course, environmental concerns — about pollution, water supply, native habitat — but those worries haven’t gained much of a toehold. Nye County, which is home to Tonopah, isn’t exactly tree-hugger country — and not just because most of the land is scrub-filled desert. Trump carried Nye County all three times he ran, with landslide support ranging from 68% to 70%.
“This is a pro-Trump town,” Westerlund said, “and I feel like his policies are doing good for the town.”
Chahal stands ready to cash in, knowing firsthand what economic good times feel like.
When he moved here in 2014, he and his wife were forced to stay in a motel for six months because workers finishing up a $1 billion solar energy project were taking up most of the living space. That’s the kind of extended-stay guest he’s after, not the tourists bedding at the Mizpah Hotel, the plushest resort in town, with its cut-glass chandeliers, Victorian furnishings and photo gallery of celebrities who’ve stayed the night.
“If I can rent 25 rooms a night, maybe 15 can be for the long term” of several weeks at a time, Chahal said. He’s done the math — $82 a night for a queen bed, single occupancy; $89 for a king — and likes how it pencils out.
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Chahal came to the U.S. in 2006, after marrying Ravinder, who grew up in the Sacramento area. She had family in Punjab and was a regular visitor to India. The two met when they were 10 years old. Chahal became an American citizen in 2020.
Politically, Indian Americans lean heavily toward the Democratic Party. But in the tiny Nevada communities where the couple lived — Lovelock, Battle Mountain and Ely before Tonopah — there was little or no Indian American presence. So Chahal wasn’t acculturated into the party the way many others have been. Rather, he embraced the GOP gospel of lower taxes and less regulation.
Working seven days a week, Chahal has little time these days for politics, beyond voting. He isn’t particularly ideological or, for that matter, worshipful of Trump.
“Every coin has a head and a tail,” he said, flipping his wrist as though tossing a quarter in the air. He sees two sides to the president. “Maybe you’re angry for some things,” Chahal said. “Maybe you agree with some things.”
He supports the notion of tariffs as a way of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. He also laments that the pizza boxes he uses, which are made in China, once cost him 30 cents and now run almost 67 cents apiece.
He backs Trump’s promise to round up and deport violent criminals who are in the country illegally. But he’s also mindful of the important role immigrants play, especially in areas like farming and construction, in sustaining the U.S. economy.
Chahal criticized the heavy-handed enforcement that resulted in the killing of two protesters in Minnesota. But he blamed their deaths on overzealous ICE agents, not Trump.
James Blanchard, a fourth-generation shrimper, was prepared to hang up his nets because of collapsing prices caused by imports. He’s not a fan of Trump’s persona, but appreciates his policies.
Living in a town greatly shaped by outside forces — the fluctuation of commodity prices, the changing of presidential administrations, the shifting priorities emanating from Washington — Chahal is familiar with vicissitudes and the business cycles of boom and bust.
Not everything Trump has done has helped the mining industry.
His tariffs and inflation have greatly increased construction costs. Cuts to the federal workforce have slowed the oversight and approval processes. His hostility toward green energy has dampened the market for electric vehicles and made solar energy considerably less attractive.
But based on the talk around town, Chahal believes a more prosperous future is in the offing. He certainly hopes so, and he’s counting on the president to deliver.
If the Constitution allowed for a third term, Chahal said, he wouldn’t hesitate voting for Trump again.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article portrays Tonopah as a once-thriving mining town that fell on hard times and is now on the cusp of a new boom, driven by lithium, boron and gold projects that locals closely associate with Trump administration promises to make the United States “a mineral powerhouse once again.”
It repeatedly emphasizes how Trump-era regulatory changes are viewed as an economic lifeline: Tonopah’s town manager describes how “as soon as he got into office, things started loosening up,” citing an unprecedented surge in drilling rigs as evidence that a friendlier federal posture toward mining is already reshaping the local landscape.
The piece presents businessman Harry Chahal as the embodiment of this new optimism: an Indian-born pizza shop owner and motel operator who credits Republican, and specifically Trump, policies with boosting his motel occupancy and justifying continued investment in the Dream Inn, even as he acknowledges lingering uncertainty and risk.
The article underscores that for Chahal, party identity matters less than perceived business outcomes; it notes that this registered nonpartisan votes Republican because those policies are seen as better for small enterprises, despite frustrations with inflation, higher import costs and the economic fallout of tariffs.
It also highlights a strong cultural and political alignment between Tonopah and Trump: Nye County is described as overwhelmingly pro-Trump, with large margins in each of the former president’s runs, and the town manager flatly calls Tonopah “a pro-Trump town” that regards Trump’s policies as “doing good for the town.”
At the same time, the article presents Chahal’s view of Trump as nuanced rather than devotional: he likens politics to a coin with “a head and a tail,” saying it is possible to be angry about some actions, such as the war with Iran or heavy-handed immigration enforcement, while still approving of others, such as tax and regulatory policies that he believes help his businesses.
The piece notes that Chahal supports Trump’s calls to deport violent criminals who are in the country illegally but is careful to distinguish that stance from broader anti-immigrant sentiment; it stresses Chahal’s recognition that immigrant labor is vital in sectors like agriculture and construction, and it frames his criticism of lethal enforcement incidents as directed at overzealous agents rather than at Trump personally.
The article acknowledges that Trump’s agenda has not been uniformly positive for Tonopah’s mining prospects: it reports that tariffs and inflation have driven up construction costs, federal staffing cuts have slowed oversight and approval processes, and hostility to green energy has dampened demand for electric vehicles and solar projects that rely on locally mined minerals.
Nevertheless, the narrative centers on a community willing to tolerate those trade-offs because the promise of hundreds of new, good-paying jobs and rising demand for housing and services feels concrete in a town where median income lags far behind the state, the hospital has closed, and vacant or dilapidated homes mark years of decline.
In closing, the article suggests that Chahal’s readiness to back Trump again, even beyond two terms if it were allowed, reflects a broader sentiment in Tonopah: a bet that the boom in extraction unleashed under Trump will outweigh its complications, and that this president, more than others, might finally deliver lasting prosperity to a place long shaped by boom-and-bust cycles beyond its control.
Different views on the topic
Environmental advocates, public-lands groups and climate-focused journalists have sharply criticized the same Trump-era push for mining and drilling that Tonopah leaders celebrate, arguing that opening vast swaths of federal land to extraction has turned formerly pristine forests and mountain landscapes into “cratered, barren land laden with heavy machinery” and long-term ecological damage.[1]
Critics point to the Trump administration’s leasing of at least 10 million acres to oil, gas and mining companies as evidence of a sweeping rollback of protections, contending that this scale of development prioritizes short-term industry gains over conservation, recreation, and the rights of future generations to intact public lands.[1]
The Trump Interior Department’s support for large-scale lithium mining in Nevada, including approval steps for a major open-pit project at Thacker Pass, has been cited by conservationists and local opponents as a cautionary example: while such projects can supply minerals used in electric-vehicle batteries, they are also accused of threatening wildlife habitat, groundwater and nearby communities through intensive, landscape-altering operations.[1]
Native American tribes and allied groups have framed portions of Trump’s mining agenda as an affront to Indigenous rights, pointing to the proposed Dewey-Burdock uranium mine in South Dakota, which the Oglala Sioux Tribe has resisted on the grounds that it would be built on land that was once part of the Great Sioux Reservation and could endanger sacred sites and water sources central to tribal life.[1]
Opponents further argue that the Trump administration often pushed mining and drilling approvals through in a rush—especially in the final months in office—limiting the time and scope for environmental review and public input, and potentially locking in projects before subsequent administrations could reassess their climate and conservation impacts.[1]
Environmental and climate policy critics of Trump contend that the broader pattern of supporting pipelines like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, encouraging natural gas and oil development, and weakening regulations on extraction undercuts U.S. commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect biodiversity, making the “mineral powerhouse” vision part of a wider retreat from environmental safeguards.[1]
While some analysts acknowledge that minerals such as lithium are crucial for renewable energy technologies, environmental organizations argue that the Trump-era approach failed to pair extraction with stringent safeguards, tribal consultation and long-term planning; they maintain that without such guardrails, mining booms risk repeating a familiar boom-and-bust cycle for rural communities while leaving permanent scars on land, water and ecosystems.[1]
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