Start from 30 curated places around Elko, NV, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
The Star Hotel
The Star Hotel has been the cornerstone of Elko's Basque community since 1910 and the longest continuously operated Basque hotel in Nevada. Dinner is served family-style at long communal tables — you sit with strangers, and courses arrive one after another: soup, salad, French fries, beans, pasta, and then your main (lamb, oxtail, tripe, or steak). The Picon Punch, a bittersweet Basque aperitif, is the thing to order at the bar before dinner.
Toki Ona
Open since 1990, Toki Ona runs the Basque family-style format — bread, soup, salad, green beans, spaghetti, and a main course — but bridges it with an American diner identity that serves breakfast and lunch too. The lamb dishes and the solomo sandwich (marinated pork loin with roasted pimentos and garlic aioli) are what locals recommend. The Picon Punch and Kalimotxo are both on the bar menu.
Trails & outdoors
Lamoille Lake Trail
A 4.4-mile round-trip hike from the Roads End Trailhead at the top of Lamoille Canyon Road up to a glacial lake just above the treeline at 9,700 feet. With 1,007 feet of elevation gain, it is moderate-to-strenuous but well within the range of fit day hikers. The trail passes through wildflower meadows and opens onto views of the canyon's granite walls before arriving at the lake. This is the Lamoille Canyon hike most locals recommend for first-timers.
Island Lake Trail
A 3.8-mile round-trip hike from the Roads End Trailhead at Lamoille Canyon to Island Lake, a glacial tarn at 9,700 feet tucked between granite ridgelines. With 940 feet of gain over 10 switchbacks, it is easier than the Lamoille Lake Trail despite the same starting elevation. AllTrails rates it 4.7 stars from 364 reviews. The view back down the canyon from the lake is the best in the Ruby Mountains for the effort required.
Things to do
National Cowboy Poetry Gathering
The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, held each year during the last week of January at the Western Folklife Center, is the event that put Elko on the cultural map in 1985. A week of poetry, music, workshops, and storytelling by working cowboys, ranchers, and Western artists from across the country, drawing 10,000 visitors to a town of 20,000. The informal hallway sessions and after-hours bar conversations are as good as the ticketed main stage shows.
Northeastern Nevada Museum
Pulling double duty as a serious regional museum and one of Elko's main rainy-day indoor activities, this museum has mastodon fossils, a Pony Express cabin, extensive Native American art, and a wildlife hall with 200-plus mounted Nevada animals. The western art gallery is an unexpected highlight. Admission is a few dollars and the experience takes two to three hours if you engage with the exhibits rather than walk through.
Landmarks & sights
Northeastern Nevada Museum
A regional museum that punches well above its size, with a mastodon skeleton, Shoshone and Paiute art, a full Pony Express cabin relocated inside, and a wildlife wing of over 200 mounted Nevada animals in habitat dioramas. The western art gallery holds works by Ansel Adams, Edward Borein, and Will James that you would not expect to find in a small-city museum. A couple of hours here will reframe the whole region.
Sherman Station Visitor's Center
Five original 19th-century ranch buildings — a main ranch house, stable, creamery, blacksmith shop, and one-room schoolhouse — moved from their original homestead 60 miles south and reassembled on the grounds next to the Northeastern Nevada Museum. The interior of the ranch house has original Walther family furniture and artifacts. Admission is free and the scale is just right for a 30-minute walk-around.