100 Fun Facts About Nevada

What is the capital of Nevada?

Carson City. Abraham Curry and his partners laid out the town in 1858, and he set aside ten acres for a capitol before Nevada was even a territory.

Nevada's 1860s mining boom earned it which nickname?

The Silver State. Silver struck near Virginia City in 1859 drew so many fortune-seekers that Nevada became its own territory just two years later.

What does the name 'Nevada' mean in Spanish?

Snowy. The name points to snow-capped mountains, a surprising label for the driest state in the country.

Nevada was rushed into the Union just before the 1864 election to help re-elect which president?

Abraham Lincoln. Republican-leaning Nevada was hurried in partly for its electoral votes, yet Lincoln won so comfortably that he never needed the new state's support.

Which state, admitted in 1863, was the only one besides Nevada to join the Union during the Civil War?

West Virginia. Its western counties refused to follow Virginia out of the Union in 1861 and won admission as a separate state two years later.

Since 2000, on which day has Nevada observed Nevada Day, the state holiday marking its admission?

The last Friday in October. Lawmakers moved the observance in 2000 to guarantee a three-day weekend, although by law Nevada Day itself is still October 31.

Which 1859 discovery led to Nevada Territory being carved out of Utah Territory?

The Comstock Lode. The rush to its ore under Virginia City packed the region with miners, and the fortunes it made helped build San Francisco as well as Nevada.

Which reservoir behind Hoover Dam is the largest in the United States by capacity?

Lake Mead. When full it can hold two years of the Colorado River's entire flow, and as it filled in 1938 it drowned the town of St. Thomas, whose ruins drought has since exposed.

Which famous writer lived in Nevada during the mining boom and described it in Roughing It?

Mark Twain. As Samuel Clemens he failed as a prospector, took a reporting job at Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise, and first signed the name Mark Twain there in 1863.

In 1931 Nevada cut its residency rule to six weeks for what?

Divorce. Most states made it far harder, so out-of-staters flocked in to sit out the six weeks, and Reno became known as the 'Divorce Capital of the World'.

Nevada is the only US state where what is legal, and then only in some rural counties?

Prostitution. State law lets only counties of under 700,000 people license brothels, which rules out Las Vegas, and they survive in just a handful of rural counties.

Which landowner holds more than 80% of Nevada?

The federal government. Most of it is not parks or bases but open public land run by the Bureau of Land Management, which alone oversees about two-thirds of the state.

Most of Nevada lies in which vast region of the American West?

The Great Basin. The name is misleading: it is really many small basins, and the rain and snow that fall in them never reach the sea.

Nearly three-quarters of Nevadans live in which county, home to Las Vegas?

Clark County. It is named for William A. Clark, the Montana senator whose 1905 land auction gave birth to Las Vegas.

Most of the Las Vegas Strip lies outside the city limits, in which unincorporated town?

Paradise. Casino bosses had the area declared a town in 1950 so that the city of Las Vegas could not annex the Strip and tax it.

What does 'Las Vegas' mean in Spanish?

The meadows. Traders on the trail to Los Angeles in 1829 found spring-fed grassland in the middle of the desert, and the name stuck.

Las Vegas was founded in 1905 when lots were auctioned beside a new what?

A railroad. The new line between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles needed a desert stop to service its trains, so a townsite was laid out beside the tracks and auctioned off.

Which downtown Las Vegas hotel-casino opened in 1906 as the Hotel Nevada?

The Golden Gate. It opened as the Hotel Nevada, and after gambling became legal again in 1931 it took the name Sal Sagev, the city's name spelled backwards.

Downtown Las Vegas's famous casino street is named after which explorer?

John C. Frémont. He camped at Las Vegas Springs on an 1844 expedition, and his published account drew later travellers to the valley.

The Bureau of Reclamation says Hoover Dam's concrete could pave a highway between which two cities?

San Francisco and New York. Poured in one go, that much concrete would have taken 125 years to cool, so the builders cast it in blocks chilled by pipes of cold water.

Which president dedicated Hoover Dam in September 1935?

Franklin D. Roosevelt. His administration had stopped using Hoover's name for the dam, and Congress passed a law in 1947 to restore it.

Which mobster opened the Flamingo hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip in 1946?

Bugsy Siegel. He opened the casino before the hotel was finished and soon had to close it for a time; his murder six months later made headlines that put Las Vegas on the map.

Which Nevada town was purpose-built to house Hoover Dam's construction workers?

Boulder City. Thousands of Depression job-seekers had flooded Las Vegas and camped in the desert, and those who were hired moved into a whole new town built for them.

Which lake is the only one in the United States deeper than Lake Tahoe?

Crater Lake. It fills the shell of Oregon's Mount Mazama, a volcano that collapsed about 7,700 years ago, and is fed only by rain and snow.

Nevada shares Lake Tahoe with which other state, which holds about two-thirds of the lake?

California. The state line runs straight through the water, and since 1969 the two states have run a joint agency to control building around the lake.

In the 1950s, Las Vegas businesses threw all-night 'dawn parties' so that guests could watch what, 65 miles away?

Atomic bomb tests. The flash lit the night sky and the mushroom clouds became a tourist draw, until a 1963 treaty banned the above-ground blasts.

In 1987 Congress singled out which Nevada ridge as the only site to study for burying America's nuclear waste?

Yucca Mountain. Nevadans nicknamed the law the 'Screw Nevada Bill' and the state has fought the plan ever since, so no waste has ever been stored there.

Area 51's official names include Homey Airport and that of which dry lake bed?

Groom Lake. The CIA did not publicly acknowledge the base until 2013, in papers released after an eight-year freedom-of-information request.

Area 51 was set up in 1955 to flight-test which spy plane?

The U-2. The CIA and the Air Force took over the remote site in 1955 so that the high-flying jet could be tested far from prying eyes.

Nevada State Route 375, near Area 51, carries which official nickname?

The Extraterrestrial Highway. Nevada made the name official in 1996, and the governor unveiled its signs in tiny Rachel alongside stars of the film Independence Day.

Life magazine gave US Route 50 across central Nevada which nickname in 1986?

The Loneliest Road in America. Life meant it as a warning to drivers, but Nevada turned the insult into a slogan and now stamps 'survival' passports for people who make the crossing.

Since 1990, the Burning Man festival has been held on which Nevada playa, north-east of Reno?

Black Rock. The playa is the dead-flat bed of an ancient lake, and each year a temporary city rises on it for the days before Labor Day, then is cleared away without a trace.

Burning Man began in 1986 as a bonfire on a beach in which West Coast city before moving to Nevada?

San Francisco. Larry Harvey and Jerry James burned the first wooden figure on Baker Beach, and the event left for the desert in 1990 after park police stopped the burn.

In 2018, Nevada produced more than three-quarters of all United States output of which metal?

Gold. Much of it is 'invisible gold', specks too fine to see, which made the huge Carlin deposits so hard to find that large-scale mining began only in the 1960s.

The McDermitt Caldera on Nevada's northern border holds one of the largest known deposits of which battery metal?

Lithium. It lies in clay left inside the ancient volcano, and in 2024 the US Energy Department lent $2.26 billion to help build a processing plant at Thacker Pass.

The Vegas Golden Knights, who began play on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017, compete in which sport?

Ice hockey. Given long odds as a brand-new team, the Golden Knights reached the Stanley Cup Final in their very first season and won the Cup in 2023.

Which Major League Baseball team won league approval in 2023 to relocate to Las Vegas?

Oakland Athletics. The owners' vote was unanimous and ended a stay in Oakland that began in 1968; in 2025 the team moved into a minor-league park in West Sacramento to wait for its new stadium.

Which 1851 Mormon trading post grew into a town that claims to be Nevada's oldest settlement?

Mormon Station, now Genoa. Its Mormon settlers were called home to Utah by Brigham Young in 1857, and nearby Dayton disputes the title.

Which billionaire moved into the Desert Inn in 1966 and bought the Las Vegas hotel rather than check out?

Howard Hughes. He never left his suite in four years there, yet bought so many hotels and so much land that he became Nevada's largest property owner.

Which immigrant sheepherders left a lasting mark on Nevada towns like Elko and Winnemucca?

Basques. A day in town for the herders and ranchers grew into Elko's National Basque Festival, still held around the Fourth of July every year.

Which town, about halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, boomed after a rich silver strike in 1900?

Tonopah. The story goes that prospector Jim Butler found the ore while chasing a runaway burro, and the rush that followed set off Nevada's second great mining boom.

As of 2020, which is the largest Asian American group in Nevada?

Filipino Americans. More than 200,000 strong, they are about 6% of all Nevadans, which has made Tagalog the state's most spoken language after English and Spanish.

Nevada's Native American peoples include which three main tribes?

Paiute, Shoshone and Washoe. The Washoe's homeland lay around Lake Tahoe, whose name comes from their word for 'lake'.

Nevada gained its southern tip, including the Las Vegas area, from which neighbour in 1867?

Arizona. The territory protested to Congress for years and tried to have the transfer reversed, but the land, Las Vegas included, stayed with Nevada.

Because it achieved statehood during the Civil War, Nevada is nicknamed the what?

Battle Born State. The words 'Battle Born' fly on the state flag, and the Las Vegas band The Killers borrowed them for the title of a 2012 album.

How did Nevada's governor finally send the state constitution to Washington in October 1864?

By telegraph. Copies sent by overland mail and by sea had failed to arrive, so the governor had the entire constitution tapped out in Morse code, a telegram of record length.

Which tree species includes Prometheus, a Nevada specimen cut down in 1964 and found to be nearly 5,000 years old?

Bristlecone pine. A graduate student had the Forest Service's permission to fell the tree on Wheeler Peak, and only afterwards did its rings show it was the oldest tree then known.

Couples flock to Las Vegas to marry partly because a Nevada marriage licence comes without which usual requirement?

A waiting period. Nevada asks for no blood test either, so a couple with identification and the fee can collect a licence in minutes and marry the same day.

Which singer made a Las Vegas comeback at the brand-new International Hotel in 1969 and returned there for seven years?

Elvis Presley. His first Las Vegas booking in 1956 had been a flop, but the 1969 comeback sold out and he kept returning to the same showroom for seven years.

In 1940, Nevada had fewer than half the residents of which next-least-populous state?

Wyoming. Nevada's 110,000 people made it by far the emptiest state then, but it has since passed three million, while Wyoming is now the least populous state.

A Reno, Nevada, tailor named Jacob Davis invented which wardrobe staple by reinforcing weak seams with copper rivets?

Blue jeans took off after Davis, short of money for a patent, asked his cloth supplier Levi Strauss to back the application, and the two shared it in 1873.

In 1997 Britain's jet car ThrustSSC became the first land vehicle to do what in the Nevada desert?

To break the sound barrier, RAF pilot Andy Green drove at 763 mph, 50 years and a day after Chuck Yeager first managed it in an aircraft.

Devils Hole, a water-filled cavern in the Nevada desert, is the only wild home of which critically endangered fish?

Pupfish in Devils Hole keep to the top 80 feet of a cavern more than 430 feet deep, and a count in spring 2025 found just 38 of them.

Evel Knievel crashed on New Year's Eve 1967 while trying to jump the fountains of which Las Vegas resort?

Caesars Palace saw the jump finally completed in 1989 by his son Robbie. Evel's own landing went wrong and left him with a crushed pelvis and femur.

Since 1985 the ranching town of Elko, Nevada, has hosted an annual national gathering that celebrates which art form?

Cowboy poetry is recited there by working ranch hands. Folklorists started the gathering so that cowboys could share poems about their lives working cattle.

In June 2011 Nevada became the first place in the world to pass a law permitting which vehicles on public roads?

Self-driving cars got their first US licence a year later, when Nevada's motor vehicle office passed a modified Toyota Prius fitted with Google's technology.

For all its casinos, Nevada has a constitution that forbids the state from running which common form of gambling?

A lottery is barred by Article 4 of the state constitution, and Nevada's casino industry has lobbied against lifting the ban, fearing the competition.

Nevada, a land of desert ranges and sagebrush, holds which climate record among the fifty US states?

Driest of all the states, Nevada sits in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada, whose peaks wring the moisture out of Pacific storms before they arrive.

In December 2018 Nevada's legislature became the first in United States history with a majority of which group?

Women held 32 of the 63 seats in the session that followed, and by 2025 their share of Nevada's statehouse had grown to 62 percent.

Which long-running TV western followed the Cartwright family on a vast Nevada ranch beside Lake Tahoe?

Bonanza took its title from the miners' word for a rich vein of ore, and the Cartwrights' fictional Ponderosa spread across a thousand square miles.

Las Vegas is the largest urban area in which desert of the Southwest, known for its Joshua trees?

The Mojave is so closely tied to the Joshua tree that botanists treat the plant as an indicator species, using its range to show where the desert ends.

Hoover Dam, on Nevada's south-eastern border, holds back which river, the one that carved the Grand Canyon?

The Colorado was sent through four tunnels driven into the canyon walls, two on each side, so that the dam's foundations could be dug in a dry riverbed.

Jackpot, a Nevada casino town on US 93, sits less than a mile from the border of which neighbouring state?

Idaho outlawed casino gaming in 1954, so two of its gaming operators moved their business just over the line to the site that became Jackpot.

Locals pronounce the middle syllable of 'Nevada' with the vowel of which word?

Apple has the vowel that locals use, and so does the state legislature. Outsiders often give the syllable the broad 'a' of palm instead.

Which river, the only outlet of Lake Tahoe, flows through downtown Reno on its way into the Nevada desert?

The Truckee runs 121 miles without ever reaching the sea, and in downtown Reno a half-mile stretch has been sculpted into a whitewater park for kayakers.

Which river guided 1840s wagon trains across northern Nevada before ending in a desert sink near Lovelock?

The Humboldt, still called Mary's River when the first emigrant group followed it in 1841, gave travellers drinking water and forage for their draft animals.

Which Nevada lake, the largest remnant of ancient Lake Lahontan, shelters a big colony of white pelicans?

Pyramid Lake takes its name from a pyramid-shaped tufa rock that rises from the water. Its Anaho Island is closed to the public to protect the nesting pelicans.

Which mountain, the highest in the Spring Mountains near Las Vegas, has hiking trails, a hotel and a modest ski area?

Mount Charleston rises to 11,916 feet, high enough to hold snow above the desert, and its Indigenous name translates as 'where snow sits'.

Which park of red sandstone and ancient petroglyphs, opened in 1934, is Nevada's oldest state park?

Valley of Fire stood in for Mars in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall, whose outdoor Martian scenes were shot almost entirely among its red cliffs.

Which summit in the White Mountains, at 13,147 feet, is the highest natural point in Nevada?

Boundary Peak is not even the top of its own ridge. Montgomery Peak, less than a mile away across the state line, stands nearly 300 feet taller.

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. led which group of entertainers at the Sands in 1960s Las Vegas?

The Rat Pack took shape on the Sands stage in a run of joint shows billed as the Summit, though the nickname went back to Humphrey Bogart's circle of friends.

Which magic act headlined at the Mirage in Las Vegas from 1990 with white tigers and white lions?

Siegfried & Roy gave 5,750 performances before the act ended in 2003, when Roy Horn was critically injured on stage by one of the tigers.

Which Egyptian-themed Las Vegas resort shines the world's most powerful man-made light beam into the night sky?

Luxor's Sky Beam uses curved mirrors to focus the light of 39 xenon lamps into one narrow shaft, and it has shone from the tip of the hotel since 1993.

In the 2001 heist film Ocean's Eleven, the crew raids a vault beneath which Las Vegas resort?

The Bellagio vault in the film also holds the takings of two other casinos, and the thieves rehearse the job in a precise replica of it that they build themselves.

Which Las Vegas landmark, at 1,149 feet, is the tallest observation tower in the United States?

The Strat is beaten in the Western Hemisphere only by Toronto's CN Tower, and thrill rides sit at its top alongside a revolving restaurant.

The High Roller, which opened on the Las Vegas Strip in 2014 and stands 550 feet tall, is what kind of attraction?

A Ferris wheel that was the tallest on Earth when it opened, the High Roller lost that record in 2021 to Ain Dubai.

A Las Vegas museum keeps more than 200 retired examples of what in an outdoor lot called the Boneyard?

Neon signs from old casinos found a home there because the company that had made many of them kept a storage yard for the ones it took down.

Benny Binion invited seven top players to his Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas in 1970, starting which annual event?

The World Series of Poker chose its first champion, Johnny Moss, by a secret ballot of the players themselves rather than by who held the chips.

Which crooner, famous for the 1963 hit Danke Schoen, is nicknamed Mr. Las Vegas after 30,000 shows there?

Wayne Newton got Danke Schoen from Bobby Darin, who had been due to sing it himself but handed it over so that the young singer could have a hit of his own.

Las Vegas and Reno have the only two airports in the United States where travellers find what in the terminals?

Slot machines are permitted in the passenger terminals under Nevada's gaming laws, which puts both among the few US airports with legal gambling on the premises.

Which tennis champion with eight major singles titles is the Las Vegas son of an Olympic boxer turned casino worker?

Andre Agassi sank to No. 141 in the world in 1997, a year after becoming Olympic champion in Atlanta, then climbed all the way back to No. 1 in 1999.

Which band, formed in Las Vegas in 2001, took its name from a fictional group in a New Order music video?

The Killers were started by singer Brandon Flowers and guitarist Dave Keuning, and each of the band's first seven studio albums went to the top of the UK chart.

Which WNBA team, relocated from San Antonio in 2018, won Las Vegas its first major professional sports championship?

The Aces beat the Connecticut Sun in the 2022 Finals, then won again in 2023 to become the league's first back-to-back champions in more than twenty years.

Which heavyweight champion beat Jim Jeffries in Reno on July 4, 1910, in a bout billed as the fight of the century?

Jack Johnson, nicknamed the Galveston Giant, won in front of 20,000 people in a ring built just for the occasion in downtown Reno.

Which First Lady of the United States was born Thelma Ryan in the Nevada mining town of Ely in 1912?

Pat Nixon owed her nickname to her father, who called her Pat because she arrived on the day before Saint Patrick's Day.

Which coach, nicknamed the Shark, led UNLV's Runnin' Rebels to the 1990 national title in men's college basketball?

Jerry Tarkanian's team beat Duke 103–73 in the final, a 30-point gap that set the record for the widest winning margin in a championship game.

Which quarterback, who later took the 49ers to a Super Bowl, played college football at the University of Nevada, Reno?

Colin Kaepernick got his only football scholarship offer from Nevada, where he became the first major-college quarterback to pass for 10,000 yards and run for 4,000.

Las Vegas's main airport dropped the name McCarran in 2021 to honour which longtime United States senator from Nevada?

Harry Reid, a former Senate majority leader, got the honour after county commissioners decided that Pat McCarran had left a legacy of anti-Semitism and racism.

Which 1961 film, shot in the northern Nevada desert, was the last that Marilyn Monroe completed?

The Misfits was written by Arthur Miller, and his marriage to Monroe broke down during a shoot in desert heat that sometimes reached 100 degrees.

Which 1990 monster film has giant burrowing worms terrorise the fictional desert town of Perfection, Nevada?

Tremors was not shot in Nevada at all. The crew built Perfection as a desert set in Inyo County, on the far side of the state line.

Which Navy fighter-pilot school, founded at Miramar in 1969, has been based at Fallon, Nevada, since 1996?

Top Gun, officially the Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, sends its graduates back to their own squadrons to pass on the air combat tactics they have learned.

Hawthorne, a small desert town in western Nevada, is home to a depot billed as the world's largest for storing what?

Ammunition is kept there in 2,427 bunkers. After a 1926 disaster at a New Jersey depot, an inquiry told the Navy to build its next one somewhere remote.

The remote Nevada mining camp of Jarbidge was the scene in 1916 of the Old West's last robbery of what?

A stagecoach carrying the mail was held up and its driver killed, and the robber became the first murderer in the country convicted on palm print evidence.

The Himalayan snowcock, a game bird trapped in Pakistan and released in the 1960s, lives wild in which Nevada range?

The Ruby Mountains reminded Nevada's game officials of the Himalayas, so they released more than 2,000 birds over fifteen years, and a few hundred now live above the treeline.

West Wendover, on Nevada's eastern edge, is the only part of the state whose clocks are legally set to what?

Mountain Time became official there in 1999, when the US Department of Transportation moved the town's clocks because its economy is tied so closely to neighbouring Utah.

In the Nevada ghost town of Rhyolite, Tom Kelly built a house in 1906 out of about 50,000 of what?

Glass bottles that once held beer and liquor formed the walls, and a Hollywood studio repaired the house in 1925 so that it could appear in a silent film.

Which mail service crossed central Nevada in relays for just 18 months from 1860 before going bankrupt?

The Pony Express cut a message's journey across the country to about ten days, using 80 riders and 400 horses, yet it never made money despite a heavy subsidy.

Which wagon train of 87 emigrants struggled across Nevada in 1846 before being trapped by snow in the Sierra?

The Donner Party lost many of its cattle and wagons on the way through Nevada, and only 48 of its members lived through the winter that followed.

Which city, founded in World War II to produce magnesium, is now the second most populous in Nevada?

Henderson grew up around a wartime plant two miles long that, at its peak, turned out a quarter of the nation's magnesium.

Fly Geyser, a multicoloured mound in the Nevada desert, has spouted since 1964 from what man-made opening?

A geothermal well drilled by an energy company feeds the geyser, and heat-loving microbes in its water have coloured the growing mound green and red.