Geography and Industry

Within its borders, Nevada has high mountains (the Sierra Nevada, which run along its border with California) and a couple of huge deserts (the Great Basin, which is located in the eastern and central portions of the state, and the Mojave, which runs across the southern tip). In the northern part of the state are some high plateaus, which have the state's available grazing land. Nevada is poor in water — it is the driest state in the Union — but wealthy in minerals.

Mining is a very important industry in Nevada. Nevada's mines produce more gold, mercury, and silver than those of any other state. There are copper and oil deposits in the state as well. What few crops that are grown in this harsh, dry climate include hay to feed the livestock bred in the north.

Nevada's climate varies widely between the state's different regions. In the mountains of the northwest, the winters are very cold. In the southern tip, near Las Vegas, the summer heat gets so hot that it takes your breath away!

Like many other western states, Nevada relies heavily on tourism as well as on its mineral wealth. Reno in the northwest and Las Vegas in the south are very popular tourist destinations, attracting millions of visitors per year. Lake Tahoe, which is close to Reno, is also one of the most popular skiing vacation destinations in the world. On the Colorado River, which forms part of Nevada's border with Arizona in the south, Hoover Dam was built during the 1930s. It is one of the largest dams in the United States and generates inexpensive hydroelectricity to power the bright lights of neighboring Las Vegas.

History

Before white settlement in the mid-nineteenth century, Nevada was relatively empty. Members of the Paiute and Ute tribes lived in the north and the Great Basin. From the 1820s through the 1840s, a number of fur traders and explorers like Peter Skene Ogden of Canada's North West Fur Company, the independent American trapper Jedidiah Smith, and U.S. Army Captain John C. Fremont visited the region and explored it extensively.

Also beginning in the 1840s, two wagon-train trails were blazed across Nevada. One trail crossed the Sierra Nevada in the north, and another passed through the small town of Las Vegas in the south, both connecting the American states in the east to the California gold fields on the Pacific coast.

At first very few settlers stopped in Nevada. Most of them just kept heading for California. The Comstock strike in northern Nevada in 1858 changed all of that. The Comstock Lode turned out to be the richest silver strike in American history, and it attracted so many people so quickly to work claims in the Sierra Nevada that what had been an empty part of the Utah Territory just a few short years before became the Nevada Territory in 1861, and the state of Nevada in 1864.

Hoover Dam

By the turn of the twentieth century, times were tough in Nevada, because silver prices were down and most of the gold mines in the state weren't producing as much as they had previously. During the early twentieth century, the U.S. government began to take a big part in developing the state's economy. First the government funded the building of Hoover Dam (which was finished in 1936) and then it decided to make Nevada the major site for its nuclear testing.

Hoover Dam brought cheap electric power to neighboring Las Vegas. Thanks to this, and to Nevada's new laws that legalized gambling, Las Vegas began to attract tourists away from places in the east where gambling was legal, such as Atlantic City.

Another result of Hoover Dam's construction across the powerful Colorado River was the creation of Lake Mead. Boating, camping, water-skiing, and fishing in the waters of Lake Mead are all popular outdoor activities in southern Nevada.

Lastly, Hoover Dam has helped divert countless tons of water from the Colorado River and send it to irrigate much of the fertile (but arid) farmland of neighboring southern California. As a result, California is one of the biggest producers of fruits and vegetables in the world today!