Ruth Thomas has bike grease under her fingernails, deep wrinkles in her cheeks and brow and the muscular calves of a marathon runner. She is 79 years old and has visited 45 of the smallest towns in America on her bicycle, has traveled over 11,680 miles on her journey, and has no home to call her own besides her tent and the road.
Thomas stopped in Tooele County's Ophir, population 34, on her trek across the country to visit the smallest incorporated towns in every state. She started the quest in 1998 when she sold her home, her car and her belongings. She has just five towns left to visit to complete her 50-state, tinniest-towns goal.
She keeps a neat journal, profiling each town she stops in. Sitting at Ophir's timeworn town hall, Thomas pulled out her notebook and began asking her questions of Ophir Mayor Walt Shubert.
"Do you have a post office?"
"Do you have a school?"
"Do you have running water?"
Shubert explained that both the post office and school have been out of operation for many years, but there is running water in Ophir that is limited to 46 leases. Water leases can only be obtained by purchasing a lease from another Ophir resident willing to give up his or her own, very much limiting the amount of development and expansion that can happen in the town.
"Oh, well that's a good thing then, yeah," Thomas said. Having traveled to 45 tiny towns, Thomas's intuition is spot on.
"Most of the [smallest towns' residents] have been bigger towns that have almost disappeared," Thomas explains. "Most of them want to keep the town the way it is. They want to modernize but still keep it the town it was."
And Ophir is no exception.
"We welcome people up here but tell them not to think of staying," Mayor Shubert said. "We don't want another Park City up here."
Thomas's wanderlust may have been ingrained after years of moving around as a child.
"I went to eight grade schools, three high schools, and five colleges," she said. "I've lived in every mining town in California and Montana."
Thomas's father was a miner and her family frequently found themselves on the road, looking for a home at the end of a highway. She was born in Butte, Mont., but Thomas eventually settled in Kellogg, Idaho where she was a teacher for 23 years.
Thomas keeps a list of some of the places she has pitched her tent or unrolled her sleeping bag on her travels. A junkyard, tire shop, under a bridge, and a "shed attached to an abandoned house" are all listed along with cornfields, a beauty shop and now the backyard of the Ophir mayor's home.
"You know where the wooden platform is back there?" Thomas asked Mayor Shubert. "Well you've got water back there."
It's unclear by "water" whether she means a pump or a creek or a hose, but either way Thomas seems to consider the most basic accommodations as amenities when deciding where to pitch her tent.
Even in cold mountain valleys, Thomas is easy to please. Temperatures in Ophir Tuesday night were nearly below 32 degrees. Was Thomas cold?
"I don't get cold. My sleeping bag is good for zero degrees," she said. "That better mean at least 32."
Thomas said she doesn't know precisely why the tiniest towns in America interest her so, but from age 18 she knew she wanted to go on a bike trip across the country. Considering her advanced age, the long trip hasn't always been easy.
"I've never been hit by a car but I've been run off the road," she said.
Thomas has needed medical attention a few times during her journeys but has never been seriously injured.
Thomas said she has literally dozens of grandchildren and great grandchildren, most of whom live in Washington state. Do her grandchildren miss her while she is away on her long months on her bike?
"Well, I don't know, I haven't met all of them," she joked.
Thomas said she spends winters with her family in and around Spokane.
With only five states' tiniest towns remaining for her to complete her achievement, she says her adventurous spirit isn't likely to settle down soon. When she completes her current adventure, she has already made plans for the next thousand-mile adventure.
"Well, you probably won't believe it," she said, "but next I want to do the Appalachian trail."
Ruth Thomas, we believe you.
email: jessefruhwirth@tooeletranscript.com