Ruth, Nevada - Town Stephen King Likes

Stephen King made two cross-country trips, driving, in part, along Interstate Highway 50 (U. S. Highway 50), which runs east and west through Nevada. On the first trip, in 1991, he was driving his daughter’s car. Driving through Ruth, Nevada, an all-but-deserted town, he supposed that all the residents must have been killed. When he then wondered who had murdered them, the thought occurred to him that the sheriff had done so.

Three years later, on a motorcycle journey from coast to coast, King again passed Ruth. This time, he was told a local legend. According to this tale, Chinese laborers were trapped underground by the collapse of a mine. Rather than risk the additional losses of their would-be rescuers, the Chinese were abandoned to their fate. These two incidents sparked the idea for Desperation (1996), which was followed by a sequel, The Regulators, which contained many of the same key characters but took place in another time and town, far from Desperation, and featured a plot that had virtually nothing to do with Desperation. [Cal, 06/17/2006]