History of Nevada

The History of Nevada as a state began when it became the 36th state on October 31, 1864, after telegraphing the Constitution of Nevada to the Congress days before the November 8 presidential election (the largest and costliest transmission ever by telegraph). Statehood was rushed to help ensure three electoral votes for Abraham Lincoln's reelection and add to the Republican congressional majorities.

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.

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.

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.

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.