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NVNevada History
Nevada's constitution reached Washington by wire. Clerks in Carson City tapped out the entire text, 16,543 words, on 26 and 27 October 1864 at a cost of roughly $3,400, because Abraham Lincoln wanted the state in the Union before the election and the mails could not get there in time. It was the longest telegram sent up to that point. The two words on the state flag, Battle Born, refer to exactly this.
The Great Basin nations
Four peoples divided the driest land in North America. The Numu, or Northern Paiute, held the Humboldt River and the lakes at Pyramid and Walker. The Nuwuvi, or Southern Paiute, held the springs of the Las Vegas and Moapa valleys. The Newe, or Western Shoshone, ranged the central ranges and the Ruby Valley. The Wasiw, or Washoe, held Lake Tahoe and speak the only Hokan language in a region otherwise entirely Numic. Their year turned on the autumn pinyon pine nut harvest, supplemented by antelope drives and waterfowl. A cache found in Lovelock Cave held tule duck decoys roughly two thousand years old, still recognizable as decoys. Farther south, farming villages on the Muddy River, excavated in the 1930s as the Lost City, were flooded by Lake Mead in 1938.
A Spanish claim nobody ever occupied
Spain claimed the Great Basin as part of Alta California and never put a settlement in it. Rafael Rivera, scouting ahead of Antonio Armijo's 1829 trading caravan between New Mexico and Los Angeles, is credited as the first outsider to find the spring-fed meadows that gave Las Vegas its name. Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson's Bay Company trapped the Humboldt in 1828, Jedediah Smith crossed the basin in 1827, and John C. Frémont gave the region the name Great Basin and named Pyramid Lake in January 1844. Mexican independence in 1821 transferred the paper claim, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on 2 February 1848 transferred it again as part of the Mexican Cession ending the war with Mexico. Congress attached it to Utah Territory in 1850. The first lasting settlement was a Mormon trading post at Genoa in 1851, and a Mormon mission at Las Vegas lasted only from 1855 to 1857.
The Comstock Lode and the heavy blue mud
In June 1859, prospectors working Six-Mile Canyon on Mount Davidson cursed a sticky blue-grey mud that kept fouling their rockers. Assayed across the Sierra in California, it came back as silver ore worth thousands of dollars per ton. Virginia City grew on top of it. Henry Comstock talked his way onto the claim, gave it his name, and sold his share for a few thousand dollars before anyone understood what was underneath.
The ore body was too soft and too large for conventional mining, so Philipp Deidesheimer designed square-set timbering in 1860, interlocking cubes of timber that let crews follow ore in any direction and deforested the eastern Sierra to do it. Adolph Sutro's drainage tunnel, nearly four miles long, reached the mines in 1878. Comstock money built San Francisco and financed the Bank of California. A young reporter arrived at the Territorial Enterprise in 1862 and first signed himself Mark Twain in Virginia City in February 1863. The sudden invasion also brought the Pyramid Lake War against the Northern Paiute in May 1860, which the Paiute won outright before losing the rematch.
Statehood eight days before an election
Nevada Territory was split from Utah on 2 March 1861. Its population was well under the customary threshold for admission, but the Union wanted silver, two more senators for the Thirteenth Amendment fight, and a safe electoral vote. Voters rejected the first constitution in January 1864 because it taxed mines on their gross value. A second convention met in July, exempted unextracted ore, and produced the document that went by telegraph in October. Lincoln proclaimed statehood on 31 October 1864, making Nevada the 36th state.
The state then grew twice by taking land from neighbours. Congress moved its eastern boundary into Utah Territory in 1866, and in 1867 handed over the wedge south of the 37th parallel that had belonged to Arizona Territory. That transfer is the only reason Las Vegas is in Nevada at all.
The twenty year famine, then Tonopah
Comstock production collapsed after 1878 and the state nearly emptied. The 1900 census counted 42,335 residents, fewer than in 1870, mills stood cold, and members of Congress discussed openly whether statehood had been a mistake. Jim Butler's silver strike at Tonopah in May 1900 and the Goldfield discovery of 1902 reversed the slide. Goldfield briefly became the largest town in Nevada, and its 1907 miners' strike drew federal troops sent at the governor's request. On 15 May 1905 the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad auctioned lots beside a new division point in the southern desert, and Las Vegas began as a railroad water stop with a saloon row, incorporating in 1911.
1931, and what one legislature can do
Two bills passed in the same session made modern Nevada. On 19 March 1931 the legislature legalized wide open casino gambling, ending a twenty year ban, and it also cut the residency requirement for divorce to six weeks, having already cut it to three months in 1927. Reno became the place Americans went to end marriages, and the dude ranches that housed them turned into an industry of their own.
The same season, work began in Black Canyon on the largest concrete structure attempted to that date. Around 21,000 people worked on Boulder Dam, 96 of them died in accidents directly tied to construction, and the government built Boulder City to house them with gambling banned inside the town line. Franklin Roosevelt dedicated it on 30 September 1935 and Congress fixed the name Hoover Dam in 1947. The Nevada Test Site opened 65 miles from Las Vegas in 1951, and 928 nuclear detonations followed through 1992, with the early atmospheric shots visible from hotel roofs downtown. State regulation caught up slowly: the Gaming Control Board dates from 1955, and the corporate gaming acts of 1967 and 1969 let publicly traded companies hold licences, which pushed syndicate money off the Strip and let Howard Hughes and later the corporations buy it. The federal government still holds about 80 percent of Nevada's land, a larger share than in any other state, which is why the 1987 decision to make Yucca Mountain the country's only nuclear waste repository has never stopped being a fight. Nevada took the worst of the 2008 foreclosure wave, then in 2018 elected the first majority-female state legislature in American history.
Silver, sagebrush and statehood in one grid
Statedoku builds daily puzzles around admission years, capitals and regions, and Carson City is one of the capitals people miss most often.
Play today's puzzle →Nevada history questions
Why did Nevada become a state so quickly?
Admission on 31 October 1864 came eight days before the presidential election. The Union wanted Nevada's silver revenue, two additional senators for the coming Thirteenth Amendment vote, and reliable electoral votes for Lincoln, so the constitution was telegraphed to Washington rather than mailed.
How did the United States acquire Nevada?
Through the Mexican Cession. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed 2 February 1848, transferred the region from Mexico. Congress placed it inside Utah Territory in 1850 and created a separate Nevada Territory on 2 March 1861.
What was the Comstock Lode?
A massive body of silver and gold ore found in June 1859 beneath Mount Davidson, at what became Virginia City. It made fortunes that built San Francisco, drove the invention of square-set timbering, and gave Nevada the population argument for early statehood.
When did Nevada legalize gambling?
On 19 March 1931. Casino gambling had been outlawed in the state since 1910. The same 1931 legislature also reduced the divorce residency requirement to six weeks, which made Reno the divorce capital of the country.
Why is Las Vegas in Nevada and not Arizona?
Because Congress moved the boundary. The wedge of land south of the 37th parallel, including the Las Vegas valley, belonged to Arizona Territory until it was transferred to Nevada in 1867.