History of Nevada

Nevada's harsh but rich environment shaped its history and culture. 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. After the beginning of the 20th century, profits declined while progressive reformers sought to curb capitalism. They imagined a civilized Nevada of universities, lofty idealism, and social reform. 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." 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 2008 financial crisis revealed extravagant speculation in housing and casinos on an epic scale.

Early history

Geologic events formed the state's Basin and Range topography, the "Nevada Basin" physiographic region, and the central Nevada desert (e.g., the recession of the Pleistocene Lake Lahontan changed the Humboldt River course), and Great Basin. The Paiute, Shoshone, Quoeech, Washoe, and Walapai tribes had inhabited Nevada for millennia before Euro-Americans arrived in the 18th century.

Prehistory

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. More than 500 kinds of Paleozoic invertebrates are known to have inhabited Nevada during the Cambrian, Devonian, and Carboniferous periods of the Paleozoic era. Near the end of the Devonian, an interval of mountain building called the Antler Orogeny began, and it continued into the Early Carboniferous. Dropping sea levels exposed regions of Nevada as dry land, contributing to the formation of environments in eastern Nevada such as lagoons and beaches. Nevada's sea level continued to drop during the Triassic period, but the western part of the state was still relatively deep. By the Jurassic, the only deep marine habitats of Nevada were in the northwestern part of the state, central Nevada was only under shallow water, and eastern and southern Nevada were characterized by other types of environment such as wetlands. During the Cretaceous, a volcanic island chain formed in far western Nevada.

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. Nevada's Sierra Nevada Mountains were later also formed, with wildlife in the region including camels, horses, mammoths, and giant ground sloths. The Cenozoic period was high in volcanic activity, and eruptions regularly shook. Nevada's trace fossil record from the Pleistocene is very rich, and creatures included birds, giant sloths, horses, lions, mastodons, and wolves. In the present day, some fossils from these two periods are preserved at state parks in Nevada such as Ice Age Fossils State Park and Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, both near Las Vegas.

The oldest known petroglyphs in North America are in the Great Basin. Near the banks of Winnemucca Lake in Nevada, this rock art dates between 10,500 and 14,800 years ago.

Archaeologists called the local period 9,000 BCE to 400 CE the Great Basin Desert Archaic Period. This was followed by the time of the Fremont culture, who were hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. Numic language-speakers, ancestors of today's Western Shoshone and both Northern Paiute people and Southern Paiute people entered the region around the 14th century CE.

Exploration, New Spain, and Mexico

In the 1770s, Franciscan missionary Francisco Garcés, born in Morata del Conde, Aragon, Spain in 1738, was the first European in the area. Nevada was annexed as a part of the Spanish Empire in the northwestern territory of New Spain. Nevada became a part of Alta California (Upper California) province in 1804 when the Californias were split. With the Mexican War of Independence won in 1821, the province of Alta California became a territory of Mexico. In later years, a desire for increased autonomy led to several attempts by the Alta Californians to gain independence from Mexico.

Jedediah Smith entered the Las Vegas Valley in 1827, and Peter Skene Ogden traveled the Humboldt River in 1828. As a result of the Mexican–American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico permanently lost Alta California in 1848. The new areas acquired by the United States continued to be administered as territories. As part of the Mexican Cession (1848) and the subsequent California Gold Rush that used Emigrant Trails through the area, the state's area evolved first as part of the Utah Territory, then the Nevada Territory (March 2, 1861; named for the Sierra Nevada). The capital is Carson City.

Territory

Nevada became part of the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico in 1848. Mexico had never established any control in Nevada, but American mountain men were in Washoe (the early name for Nevada) as early as 1827. A permanent American presence began in 1851 when the Mormons set up way stations en route to the California goldfields. In the absence of any governmental authority, some 50 Mormons and non-Mormon prospectors and cattle ranchers drew up the "Washoe code" to deal with land claims; its coverage eventually covered other governmental issues. There still was no federal presence in the area so religious tensions worsened and petitions of complaint went to Washington. Non-Mormons sought annexation to California. Utah Territory countered this by incorporating the area as a county. When Federal troops were sent to Utah in 1857, the Mormons left Washoe. The non-Mormons took over and launched a move for separate territorial status.

The early 1860s saw the end of an Indian war, the great Comstock mining boom of 1859 in Virginia City and the coming of the Civil War. The provisional territorial government led to the creation of the Nevada Territory by Congress in 1861. The pragmatic attempts to establish workable frontier institutions had failed and the paternalistic territorial system was welcomed.

Statehood

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.

The University of Nevada was founded in Elko in 1874 and moved to Reno in 1885 (extension classes began at Las Vegas in 1951).

Water sources

The largest United States reservoir (Lake Mead) was created by the Hoover Dam on the state's 1867 Colorado River border (construction began in 1931). From 1930 to 2000, the Clark County population grew from 8,532 to 1,375,765; while the Reno population increased from 18,529 to 180,480.

Mining

The 1859 Comstock Lode discovery opened the era of silver mining in Nevada, and attracted thousands of miners—most from California. It was discovered by James Finney in Carson County. Disputes over the legal limits of a claim soon went to court, as the Law of the Apex, used to determine those limits, was unworkable for the deep ore bodies in the Comstock. The legal and judicial system of Carson County was unprepared for the tremendous demands placed on it. 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. Though workable mining laws still were needed, the resignation of the entire territorial supreme court in 1864 did cause litigation to stop and allowed mining work to resume.

There was a gold rush that created Aurora in (1860). Located on the disputed border with California, at one time Aurora was the county seat of counties in California and Nevada until the boundary dispute was settled locating Aurora in Nevada.

The 1867 expansion of the state's southern boundary was prompted by the discovery of gold in the area since officials thought Nevada would be better able to oversee the expected gold rush. By 1872, Nevada mining was an industry of speculation and immense wealth. 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.

The discovery of silver and gold in 1910 near Tonopah set off a boom that ended Nevada's Economic depression.

The operators used the best available technology to recover gold and silver from ore, but by modern standards, there were many inefficiencies and chemical pollution. Methods included the use of the arrastra, the patio process, the Freiberg process, and the Washoe pan process. Estimates of value lost through recovery processes ran as high as 25%. Mine operators sought improved technology but were unwilling to wait years or decades for it to arrive. No one at the time understood the health problems such metals as mercury could cause.

Transportation

Although the transcontinental railroad crossed the state in 1869, most towns and mines were remote from it and required a network of wagon freight and stagecoaches. 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. Hold-ups were rare and usually involved petty theft since armed guards were an effective deterrent. Mail contracts kept stage lines afloat and allowed the emergence of a class of entrepreneurs who won contracts and subcontracted the actual work.

The Eureka and Palisade Railroad was a narrow-gauge railroad ninety miles long built-in 1875 to carry silver-lead ore from Eureka, Nevada, to the Southern Pacific Railroad trunk line that ran through Palisade. Traffic on the line gradually decreased due to the effects of flood, fire, competition from road traffic, and dwindling amounts of ore extracted in Eureka. The rails and rolling stock of the last surviving narrow-gauge railroad in Nevada were removed in 1938.

Historic highways include the 1937 US 6 and 1919 US 50 (Lincoln Highway). The 1926 destination of the first airmail flight was Elko. Interstate 15 in Nevada was completed in 1974, while the Lovelock bypass was the last completed section of Interstate 80 in Nevada.

Amtrak's Desert Wind served Las Vegas until 1997. When service ended, Las Vegas became one of the country's largest metropolitan areas without long-distance passenger rail service. 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.

Mining towns

During construction of the Sutro Tunnel, the company town of Sutro was created at the lower end of the tunnel. At one time, boasting a population of 600–800 people some speculating up to 3,000. A church, a weekly newspaper, and a post office that was in operation from March 1872 until October 1920.

Golconda was a mining town in northern Nevada built when the discovery of copper, silver, gold, and lead brought entrepreneurs who opened mines and mills in the district. A diverse society of native-born Americans, French, Portuguese, Paiutes, Chinese, and other people came to Golconda to live and work. From 1898 to 1910, the town had a train depot, several hotels, a school, businesses, newspapers, and two brothels. Its population peaked at about six hundred in 1907–08. Although boosters predicted growth for Golconda, after 1910 the mines played out, leaving the region as an area of ranches and farms. Most of the town's buildings from its mining heyday are gone, and Golconda today is a minor stop on Interstate 80.

Tuscarora was founded in Elko County after an expedition by trader William Heath discovered gold. As miners flocked to the town in 1867–70, a fort was built to offer protection from Indian raids and a water ditch was created to supply the town with water. Many Chinese men who had been employed by the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) relocated to the town and began placer mining. A second boom began following the discovery of silver in 1876–77.

A strike at Tonopah (1900, silver) was followed by strikes in Goldfield (1902–1919, gold) and Rhyolite (1904–1911, gold). The strikes brought Nevada to the forefront of the nation again, just as the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada, had in the late 1800s. While the Comstock made dozens of owners rich, the gold in Goldfield and the stock sold on speculation made two people exceedingly rich.

George S. Nixon and George Wingfield were worth $30 million after taking their Goldfield Consolidated Mining Company public in 1906. The partners had a loss the following year and Nixon's Nye County Bank struggled.

Wingfield, however, reaped an even greater fortune from real estate, especially after moving to Reno, Nevada. After gambling was legalized in 1931, Wingfield again had money coming in from his leases and a partnership in several casinos.

As many Nevada towns went through the boom and bust cycle, gambling keep the state's economy strong. However, remnants of mining resulted in the 1989 designation of the Carson River Mercury (Superfund) Site

Rio Tinto was developed after the discovery of copper in Northern Elko County's Cope Mining District. The town moved from mine to mine and it went from boom to bust in regular cycles. In 1919 Frank Hunt discovered copper in the area and later named his claim Rio Tinto. Once investors and big mining companies became interested in Hunt's copper, the town soon developed and filled with homes to house the miners. After all the copper was removed, Rio Tinto suffered the same fate as most boom towns and vanished.