Nevada, NV

Nevada is a state located in the western region of the United States of America. The capital is Carson City and the largest city is Las Vegas.

The state's official nickname is "The Silver State", due to the large number of silver deposits that were discovered and mined there.

In 1864, Nevada became the 36th state to enter the union, and the phrase "Battle Born" on the state flag reflects the state's entry on the Union side during the American Civil War. Much of Nevada is desolate wilderness, from the Mojave Desert in the south to the Great Basin in the north, and about 86% of the state's land is actually controlled by the US federal government under various jurisdictions including military.

As of 2006, the population of the state was about 2.6 million, with over 85% residing in the metropolitan areas around Las Vegas and Reno.

The state is well known for its easy marriage and divorce proceedings, legalization of gambling and, in some counties, prostitution.

It also has some of the country's strictest drug laws.

In 2005, the state issued a specialty license plate via the Nevada Commission on Tourism that lists the name of the state as Nevăda to help with a pronunciation problem.

Geography

The state is broken up by several north-south mountain ranges. Most of those ranges have inland-draining valleys between them, which belies the image portrayed by the term Great Basin.

Much of the northern part of the state is within the Great Basin Desert, a mild desert that experiences hot temperatures in the summer and sub-freezing temperatures in the winter. Occasionally, moisture from the Arizona Monsoon will cause summer thunderstorms; Pacific storms may blanket the area with snow.

The state's highest recorded temperature was 125 °F (52 °C) in Laughlin (elevation of 605 feet (184 m)) on 29 June 1994.

The Humboldt River crosses from east to west across the northern part of the state, draining into the Humboldt Sink near Lovelock.

Several rivers drain from the Sierra Nevada eastward, including the Walker, Truckee and Carson rivers. The mountain ranges, some of which have peaks above 13,000 feet (4,000 m), harbor lush forests high above desert plains, creating sky islands for endemic species.

The valleys are often no lower in elevation than 3,000 feet (900 m). The eastern parts of the state receive more summer moisture and have a slightly more verdant terrain. Sagebrush grows everywhere and some rivers and streams break the desert terrain.

The southern third of the state, where the Las Vegas area is situated, is within the Mojave Desert. The area receives less rain in the winter but is closer to the Arizona Monsoon in the summer.

The terrain is also lower, mostly below 4,000 feet (1,200 m), creating conditions for hot summer days and cool to chilly winter nights due to inversion. Nevada and California have by far the longest diagonal line (in respect to the cardinal directions) as a state boundary at just over 400 miles (640 km).

This line begins in Lake Tahoe nearly 4 miles (6 km) offshore (in the direction of the boundary), and continues to the Colorado River where the Nevada, California, and Arizona boundaries merge 12 miles (19 km) southwest of the Laughlin Bridge.

The largest mountain range in the southern portion of the state is the Spring Mountains, just west of Las Vegas.

The state's lowest point is along the Colorado River, south of Laughlin.

Mining

Mining shaped Nevada's economy for many years (see Silver mining in Nevada).

However in the late 19th century, Nevada found it increasingly more difficult to compete with states such as Colorado and Utah in the mining industry.

There was even talk of stripping away statehood, the only time in American history such an action was discussed in Congress.

However, the rich silver strike at Tonopah in 1900 is thought to have saved the state from near collapse.

This was followed by strikes in Goldfield and Rhyolite, lasting well into the 1910s and making Nevada a dominant player in mining once again.

Gambling and labor

Unregulated gambling was common place in the early Nevada mining towns but outlawed in 1909 as part of a nation-wide anti-gaming crusade.

Due to subsequent declines in mining output and the decline of the agricultural sector during the Great Depression, Nevada re-legalized gambling on March 19, 1931, with approval from the legislature.

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. However, re-outlawing gambling has never been seriously considered since, and the industry has become Nevada's primary source of revenue today.

In 1931, construction began on Hoover Dam near Boulder City. Thousands of workers from across the country came to build the dam, and providing for their needs in turn required many more workers.

The boom in population is likely to have fueled the relegalization of gambling, alike present-day industry.

Both Hoover Dam and later war industries such as the Basic Magnesium Plant first started the growth of the southern area of the state near Las Vegas.

Over the last 75 years, Clark County has grown in relation to the Reno area, and today encompasses most of the state's population.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nevada".