The site of numerous freshwater springs, Wells was first known as Humboldt Wells, as it is the easternmost source of the Humboldt River. The abundant water attracted westward settlers, who made it an important campsite on the Emigrant Trail. When the Central Pacific Railroad came through in...
One of Nevada's remotest towns, Jarbidge is located in the Jarbidge Wilderness, part of the Humboldt National Forest. Access from Nevada is along one of two dirt roads, both of which are snowed in during the winter, sometimes for as long as eight months. The road from Idaho is open year...
Linear features connect the towns of central Nevada in much the same way that the towns of the northern region are linked. In the nineteenth century the Pony Express and Overland Trail routes carried mail and immigrants across the state. In the twentieth century U.S. 50 linked central...
For centuries the site of Fallon and the environs were inhabited by prehistoric cave-dwelling peoples who left behind baskets, woven mats, and a variety of petroglyphs, the most visible of which can be seen at Grimes Point off U.S. 50 just east of town. In the nineteenth century the Pony...
Despite its location near the geographic center of Nevada, Austin is far from just about everything. At one time it was a booming mining town that rivaled the silver production of Virginia City. In 1862 a former Pony Express rider familiar with the area discovered silver in Pony Canyon in the...
Like Austin, Eureka began as a mining town nestled in a mountain canyon. In 1864 prospectors fanning out from Austin discovered silver-lead ore, but its composition was such that it took nearly six years to devise a milling and smelting technology to refine the ore. Once the smelting process...
The enormous waste piles of the Ruth (Liberty-Eureka) Pit near the town of Ruth are visible from a distance on U.S. 50, heading east toward Ely. This pit, created during the first half of the twentieth century, was the site of one of the most prolific mining operations in Nevada's history. Ely...
Once a thriving company town, McGill has struggled to survive since the closing of the Kennecott Copper plant in the late 1970s. The smelter (built 1907–1908) with its 750-foot-tall smokestack is gone, but much of the town's fabric remains. The Nevada Consolidated Copper Company (NCCC) laid...
Nevada's only national park encompasses 77,000 acres on the remote central eastern edge of the state. The park contains the entire range of ecosystems found within the Great Basin. Main attractions include the Snake Range, with thirteen peaks rising over 11,000 feet; a...
As in central Nevada, this region's remoteness has preserved small-town life. No interstates or railroads connect places here, although the main highway, U.S. 95, carries some traffic between northwestern Nevada and Las Vegas. Mining has always been the driving force in this part of...
Settled just south of Walker Lake in a broad, flat valley, Hawthorne has always been tied economically to the boom-and-bust cycles of mining, politics, and the military. The arrival of the Carson and Colorado Railroad in 1881, which bypassed Yerington to the north, made Hawthorne a service...
The Southern Pacific established Mina in 1905 to serve as the terminus of its Hazen branch. The town gained its small share of prosperity as the junction for the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad, and a Southern Pacific narrow-gauge line to California. Never a large...
Tonopah was settled when Jim Butler discovered a rich vein of silver ore in 1900. Within a year, the rush was on with such fervor that it pulled Nevada out of a twenty-year depression. The boom lasted off and on until about 1915, when the mines began to play out, but Tonopah has endured over...
In 1902 Jim Butler, the discoverer of valuable ore that set off Tonopah's first boom, sponsored two young prospectors searching for new veins of gold and silver. About twenty-five miles south of Tonopah they found a ledge of gold ore that turned out to be more valuable than any previously...
Located near the Nevada entrance to Death Valley, Rhyolite is one of Nevada's most visited ghost towns. Its sparse ruins provide little evidence of the town's size in the 1900s. Within one year of the discovery of gold in the area, Rhyolite was a booming mining center. Residents constructed...
Though the region around Berlin had been prospected in the 1860s, miners did not establish the Berlin Mine until 1896 and the town of Berlin until the following year. The name may have been given to the town by German prospectors, but no evidence exists to substantiate this story. The mining...
Most of Nevada's hundreds of ghost towns have no inhabitants. Belmont has about ten residents, though most of its main street has fallen into ruin. The town was settled after the discovery of silver deposits in 1865 started a rush. Within two years, Belmont had a population of several...
The remaining buildings of this town, named after the old Manhattan Mines southwest of Belmont, stand in a narrow gulch in the Toquima Mountains not far from Belmont. Though mining began in the area in the nineteenth century, only after major discoveries spurred by the mining booms in...
Southern Nevada is a place of contrasts. Much of the region is uninhabited, yet nearly twothirds of Nevada's population live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Though Las Vegas is the region's economic and political center, small mining and farming towns, with their own strong identities...
The Las Vegas of today has changed drastically since the early twentieth century. Once just a stop on an overland mail route in the middle of Las Vegas Valley, the city has become one of the world's most famous entertainment centers. With its huge casinos, growing suburbs, and automobile...
Downtown Las Vegas, the oldest developed section of the city, has the highest density of buildings of any place in Nevada, with the possible exception of downtown Reno. Laid out by the railroad on a grid in 1905, it was the obvious spot in which to build because of the proximity of the...
The west side of Las Vegas, the area west of I-15 and north of West Bonanza Road, is a traditionally African American neighborhood once known as McWilliams's Township. It developed across the railroad tracks from downtown because of segregation; many African Americans arrived in the...
The Strip—that four-mile stretch of road lined with casinos and lights—is what characterizes the city in the minds of most visitors. It is the ultimate example of both the desert oasis and the human capacity to exploit the environment. Once a dusty road leading to Los Angeles,...
Today a booming city within the Las Vegas metropolitan area, North Las Vegas began in the 1910s as a sparsely populated, unregulated subdivision. During Prohibition it was known as an area of bootlegging, and in the 1930s it became a popular location for inexpensive housing. The...
Compared with Las Vegas, Henderson is a newcomer in southern Nevada. It began as Basic Townsite, a suburb for workers at the Basic Magnesium plant. Contractors for the federal government constructed the plant in 1941 to produce magnesium—the main ingredient of incendiary bombs—from...
Boulder City is an anomaly in Nevada. The small town seven miles southwest of Hoover Dam has a distinct center and architecture unified by the Spanish Colonial Revival style. The federal government and the Six Companies consortium of major western contracting firms (Utah...
Laughlin is one of Nevada's newest boom towns, but unlike the mining towns that are often associated with this term, Laughlin's development rests entirely on gambling. In 1966 Don Laughlin bought a small beach along the Colorado River in the southern tip of Nevada wedged between Arizona and...
Modest stone and wood-frame buildings, as well as a few water towers, remain from Goodsprings' early twentieth-century mining days. When the mines closed, the town managed to survive, though most of its downtown buildings are gone, and abandoned structures can be seen throughout the town...
Carved out of the Las Vegas (Nellis Air Force) Bombing and Gunnery Range in 1950, the Nevada Test Site covers 1,350 square miles of desert in southern Nevada, approximately eighty miles from Las Vegas. The Nevada congressional delegation fought hard for...
Logandale is located in the Moapa Valley near the Muddy River on the old site of St. Joseph, established in 1865 by Mormon settlers from Utah. Brigham Young had sent these settlers to establish orderly communities and produce cotton and other agricultural commodities to increase the self-...
