History of Nevada
Statehood was rushed to help ensure three electoral votes for Abraham Lincoln's reelection and add to the Republican congressional majorities.
Before 1858 small Mormon settlements existed along the border of Utah, with the western part stumbling along until the great silver strikes beginning in 1858 created boom towns and fabulous fortunes.
But an economic bust during the 1910s and disillusionment from failures at social reform and a population decline of nearly one-fourth meant that by 1920 Nevada had degenerated into a "beautiful desert of buried hopes.
"[2] The boom returned when big-time gambling arrived in 1931, and with good transportation (especially to California metropolitan areas), the nation's easiest divorce laws, and a speculative get-rich-quick spirit, Nevada had a boom-and-bust economy that was mostly boom until the worldwide financial crisis of 2008 revealed extravagant speculation in housing and casinos on an epic scale.
[7] During the Late Precambrian, eastern and southern Nevada was being gradually covered by a shallow sea, which continued to expand into the state through the Devonian.
[8] During the Cenozoic geologic upheaval, Basin and Range physiographic province was created, which formed woodlands harboring trees like oaks, redwoods, and willows and wildlife including horses, mammoths, and rhinos.
[8] Nevada's trace fossil record from the Pleistocene is very rich, and creatures included birds, giant sloths, horses, lions, mastodons, and wolves.
[16] Statehood came in 1864 following a Carson City convention (July 4–28) and a public vote on September 7 (the population of 6,857 in 1860 increased to 42,941 in 1870), although Nevada had far fewer than the 60,000 people usually required.
Judges were underpaid and underqualified, bribery of witnesses and jurors was commonplace, vague record-keeping created nearly insurmountable difficulties with property titles, and evidence was often destroyed.
[18][19] After 1870, however, the mining industry went into eclipse, as the state's Silverite politicians worked to secure laws to require the federal government to purchase silver.
Numerous small companies supplied the horses, mules, and wagons for hauling borax and silver ore. Stagecoaches were notoriously uncomfortable across the roadless land, but were better than the alternatives and flourished until a railroad finally arrived.
Since 1997, numerous proposals have been made to reintroduce passenger service in some form, including the Las Vegas Railway Express ("X-Train").
In 2024 construction started on a high speed rail project by Brightline West to link Las Vegas with Southern California.
Once investors and big mining companies became interested in Hunt's copper, the town soon developed and filled with homes to house the miners.
[26] Over 87% of the Nevada area is owned by the federal government, as homesteads of maximum 640 acres (2.6 km2) in the arid state were generally too little land for a viable farm.
The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909, the establishment of a state dry-farming experiment station, and private promotional efforts stimulated dry farming within a fifty-mile radius of Wells, Nevada, but a combination of low precipitation, intense flash flooding, short summers, abundant jackrabbits, mediocre soil, and the faulty judgment of the settlers themselves virtually ended the ill-favored experiment after 1916.
Then Jones and Sadler embraced bimetallism and a companion cure-all for Nevada's economic ills—reclamation of desert land in order to provide an economy based partly on agriculture.
Besides exercising significant economic clout, they have fundamentally influenced the Nevada social order in other ways, in part because of their persistent anticlericalism.
[31] Because of hostility from miners and their sympathizers, Nevada's territorial and state antigambling laws were mostly unenforced from 1859 until the Comstock Lode mining booms collapsed in the 1870s.
[33] At the time, the leading proponents of gambling expected that it would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries.
[35] The Second World War was good to Reno economically, as local bases and those in Northern California helped boost the economy.
In the late 1940s "Bugsy" Siegel helped get Las Vegas on the map by first building the most expensive casino in the world, the Flamingo, and then by being gunned down in his Beverly Hills home.
Las Vegas casinos of the 1950s were mostly low-rise building taking advantage of the wide-open spaces that Reno didn't offer in the downtown area of Virginia Street.
However, Las Vegas boomed with new luxurious hotels in the 1960s and the city's gambling casinos drew players from all over the world, and away from Reno and Lake Tahoe.
The 1931 gambling law helped enable the explosive growth of the Las Vegas area, where the population grew from five thousand in 1930 to over two million by 2013.
[37] Military and other government exploration of the territory included efforts by John C. Frémont (1843), Lieutenant E. G. Beckwith (1854),[40] and the Fortieth Parallel Survey (1867).
Camp Williston (1940–1944) at Boulder City provided security for Henderson's Basic Magnesium Plant (14,000 employees) and Hoover Dam[44] (a concrete observation station still exists).
Belief in limited government leads to an electorate that backs a pro-choice position on abortion while opposing the Equal Rights Amendment for women.
Goodman was widely criticized after suggesting that Las Vegas become a control group to test the effectiveness of social distancing.
Restaurants, retailers, outdoor malls, and hair salons were among the businesses allowed to reopen, but with precautions in place, such as limiting occupancy to 50 percent.
