TIME IMMEMORIAL – First Inhabitants
The first inhabitants of Nevada were rocks, sage brush, coyotes, and alkali dust.
Of course, the first humans were Indians, such as the Shoshone, Washo, and Paiute. Then the Euro-Americans came, because they liked looking at the rocks. Of these, the Spaniards came first. They didn’t mind leaving home, because the food there in Spain is so bland.
The Spaniards are pretty much gone (which you can tell by the absence of bullfighting rings in the State), but the Indians stuck around, as you can see below.
1821 — Nevada Becomes Part of Mexico
Mexico won its war of independence from Spain in 1821, and Alta California (with Nevada embedded within it) became a Territory of Mexico. The food got much better.
1848 – Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was made in 1848. This came about at the end of the Mexican-American Taco Eating Contest (nobody expected the Americans to win this contest, but they cheated, so...).
Anyway, the end result of the Treaty was that Nevada (and the surrounding country) was henceforth owned by the Ewe-Knighted States.
Embarrassed and angry at the shady dealings during the taco eating contest, Hidalgo became a Norse horseman and rode his valiant steed (whom he named “Anthony Hopkins”) across Arabia, with Lawrence “of Arabia” Taylor. Together, they sacked Istanbul.
The map below shows the area the Ewe-Knighted States acquired by means of the taco cheating/Treaty:
All of California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona were part of the deal; also parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The cartographer was attempting to draw a straight line from Colorado down through New Mexico, but his kid came up and tickled him while he was at it, and the line got all squiggly, as you can see. Just another of those amazing quirks of history.
1859 — Comstock Lode
The Comstock Lode, the richest silver mine in Ewe-Knighted States history, was discovered near Virginia City in 1859 by Henry Comstock. He named his find after his friend Comstock Jones.
Comstock himself did not benefit overmuch by his find, because he sold his interest in it early at a low price.
A rather fanciful and stylized notion of the lode and its setup are shown in this period picture from 1876:
This is what the place actually looked like a few years earlier, from above the ground:
1863 – Clemens becomes Twain
While working as a correspondent for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in 1863, Sam Clemens signed one of his dispatches “Mark Twain.” The name stuck.
Some years later, after returning east, Twain wrote the book “Roughing It” about his experiences in “Washoe” (Nevada) -- as well as California and the Sandwich Islands (later renamed Hawaii).
Below is a formal portrait taken from “Roughing It” of Twain drinking “slumgullion” while on his way to Nevada.
1864 — Statehood
Nevada became a State in 1864, after only three years of Territoryhood. Because of the haste for Nevada to join the Union (in the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln wanted as many non-slavery States in the Union as possible), the Nevada state constitution was the longest Morse code telegram ever sent over the wires. This transmission from Carson City to Washington D.C. took several hours.
Some government artist came up with a stamp to commemorate the event, mostly because there were a lot of stamp mills in Nevada. Here it is in all its glorious technicolor:
As you can see, Carson City was a strictly segregated city. As you can also probably easily deduce, many in Carson hailed from the Midwest. The green houses were occupied by Green Bay Packers fans, the blue ones by Detroit Lions fans, the purple ones by Minnesota Vikings fans, and the red ones by Chicago Bears fans. This often led to friction.
1899 – The Mother of All Slot Machines
“Good-time” Charlie Fey invented a slot machine in 1899. He named it the Liberty Bell. This slot machine became the mother of all other slot machines, in that it served as a template or model for all that followed.
In 1960, there were 16,067 slot machines in Nevada. By 1999, this number had grown thirteen-fold to 205,726 – one for every 10 residents.
Some of the progeny of that mother of all slot machines are seen below.
Is this a form of masochism?
1931 — Big-Time Gambling
Big-time gambling made its start in March of the Year of our Lord 1931, when Governor Honoré de Balzac signed into law a bill legalizing gambling in Nevada
That same year, the Pair-O-Dice Club, the first casino on the Lost Wages Strip, opened. To accommodate all the necessary psychiatrists, policemen, pros...thetic manufacturers, and such that would be needed, the village of Lost Wages grew from a comfortable 5,000 residents in 1930 (the year before the legalization of gambling) to more than 600,000 at the time of writing (now), a 120-fold (no pun intended) increase.
A prescient history nerd had the foresight and exercised the forethought to make a daguerreotype of some of the first marks customers who arrived in Lost Wages:
1931 to 1936 – Hoover Dam Constructed
From 1931 to 1936, Hoover Dam was constructed on the Nevada/Arizona border. It was named for a brand of vacuum cleaner. This was considered fitting (allegedly, no money passed under the table in connection with these naming rights) because the dam “sucked up” the water from behind it and stored it in a giant “bag” underneath, in the dam’s basement.
Ansel Adams took a picture of the dam, because he was threatened that if he didn’t, they would dam Yosemite just like they had Hetch-Hetchy before that. Adams schlepped his gear to the desert and got this shot:
The water you can see in the picture above is no longer there; it flowed downstream.
Adams got closer and tipped his camera sideways to get this snapshot, too:
Hard hats were first invented specifically for workers on the Hoover Dam, but not until 1933, when many had already gotten bashed on the noggin and received concussions. Some even fell off or were pushed off the top of the dam and broke some crowns on the way down. It was fun while it lasted.
1942 — Area 51
The immensely popular underground disco nightclub Area 51 opened in 1942 somewhere in the Nevada desert.
Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded, but the site still has historical significance, because it is the venue where Frank Sinatra (using his undercover name Frank Snotrag) introduced disco in a top-secret meeting with musicologists, social engineers, and other mad scientists.
In more recent times, John Revolting has been seen there on multiple occasions. When he shows up, Revolting usually (apropos of nothing) dances on a mechanical bull and waves his fedora around.
Not understanding why anybody in their right (or left) mind would listen to – let alone dance to – disco music, the government commandeered the area around the club, and is running top-secret psychological experiments there in a (probably vain) attempt to find out.
If you try to spy on these proceedings, you will be greeted by this unwelcome sign, made available by Valder137, who may or may not be a government spy or counterspy:
1943 -- “The Ox-Bow Incident” Movie
The Ox-Bow Incident, a 1943 movie which was later used as the basis of a 1940 novel with the same title, was directed by Bill Sickman and starred Henry Dana, Jane Fonda, and Nanook (AKA “The Mighty Quinn”).
The setting for the flick is Bridger’s Wells, Nevada, 1885. The protagonist walks into a saloon and there hears the rustling of the dress of a woman who is wearing cowbells around her neck.
He laughs, and jokingly suggests: “More cowbell!”
The men in town, not seeing the humor in the situation – and who are all related to the woman in one shape or form – threaten to hang the jovial stranger for his overly familiar manner. He buys them whiskey, and they forget about it.
This is where the whole incident took place (photo made available by Fourlix):
1951 to 1992 — Nuclear Testing Begins & Ends
Nuclear testing began in Nevada in 1951 when somebody accidentally dropped a 1 kiloton bomb on a Frenchman, knocking him down and squashing him flatter than a flapjack (AKA a Johnny Cake). Even his beret got mangled beyond repair.
Wanting to find out if this serendipitous result would work the same on people other than Frenchmen, testing continued on all other tribes and tongues. By 1992, they had run out of new types of people to sqash and squish, and begrudgingly ceased the enlightening experiments.
As can be seen below, sadly some of these experiments failed:
1959 to 1973 – Bonanza!
Set in post-Civil War Virginia City and its environs (i.e., the surrounding area), the television infomercial “Bonanza” was broadcast from 1959 to 1973 (on ABC, NBC, or CBS – it had to be one of these three, since there were only three channels back then).
The Civil War era was the same time period that Sam and Orion Clemens were in the area, secretarying the Territory and reporting for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.
Bonanza featured a widower named Naphtali and his sons Add ’em (whom he had hoped would become a skilled mathematician); Haas (named that, not because he was Dutch, but because he looked like an avocado at birth); Little John; a hired hand named Canned Corny; and their Chinese cook Skip Dance, who always came in right on cue.
Here’s Dan Tackler, who played Haas, on the set (as you can tell, he no longer looked all that much like an avocado by this stage of his life):
“Dadburn it, pa, turn that camera off, would ya?!”
1972 — “Beer and Tanning in Lost Wages”
Beer and Tanning in Lost Wages is a guidebook to that city by Fisher S. Thompson. It tells about the best brew pubs in town, as well as the preferred places to get your hide tanned.
As to the latter: Eschewing the natural way, which is considered gauche and plebeian by Lost Wagians, indoorsmen and indoorswomen can fake a healthy tan by subjecting their skin to a microwave slow-bake for the cheap-at-twice-the-price rate of $49.99 for a half-hour session at many joints on “The Strip.”
As an added bonus, in the book author F. Gonzo Thompson also reveals “the rest of the story” behind the well-known expression “The money you bring to Lost Wages, stays in Lost Wages.”
1976 -- “The Shootist”
Duke Wayne Snider made his last movie in 1976. The Shootist was set in 1901 Carson City.
In it, retired actuary Duke moves into a boarding house run by Ginger Rogers and her son O.P. Howard. Duke’s old friend and doctor, Rod Stewart, advises him to “get a life” and do something exciting for once. So, Duke challenges Daniel Boone, Captain Morgan, and Hugh Manatee to a winner-take-all game of Bingo.
Duke gets so excited that he suffers a myocardial infarction, following which O.P. takes his hand and plays out his string.
Here’s Duke Wayne Snider at the height of his actuarial career when he had a disagreement with an IRS agent:
“Smile when you say my actuarial tables are goofed up, pilgrim!”
. . .
Each Saturday and Tuesday an excerpt of one State’s (satirized) history will be posted here, in alphabetical order (from Alabama to Wyoming).
For “the rest of the story,” the (32-page) complete book “The New All-too-True-Blue History of Nevada” is available here.
The regions of the U.S. have been combined into volumes, too; Nevada is included in the volume The New All-too-True-Blue History of the American West
You can listen to this excerpt here.
Blackbird Crow Raven is also the author of the book “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle”