Nevada Admitted to Union, 1864
Nevada was admitted to the Union,
October 31, 1864, being the thirty-sixth in the sisterhood of
States. In area she comprises an imperial domain, being almost
as large as England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales combined. Her
greatest length from north to south is 483 miles; the greatest
width on the thirty-ninth parallel, approximately 320 miles, and
the area 112,190 square miles, of which 1000 square miles are
covered by the waters of lakes.
Nevada was the last of the States of
the Union to be permanently settled, or to have established
within her borders trading or military posts, which survived
until submerged by the rising tide of settlement. The territory
now embraced in the State was probably reached by some of the
early Spanish exploring parties, but the earliest authenticated
visit by white men was that of a party of Spanish friars under
Father Francisco Garces who at the end of the trip in January,
1776, established a mission post and residence at what is now
Fort Yuma, Arizona. There is no record of other white men having
visited Nevada until 1825, when several hunting and trapping
parties penetrated the State. Historians do not agree as to
which of these parties came first. Bancroft says Peter Skeen
Ogden was the first to reach the valley of the Humboldt in
midsummer, coming up the Owyhee from Walla Walla. Henry and
Ashley with a party of free trappers came to the Humboldt later
the same summer, from Bear River. Myron Angel, in his history of
Nevada, published by Thompson & West, says Jedediah S. Smith, a
partner of Ashley's, was the first to reach the Humboldt, which
he called Mary's River, after his Indian wife. Smith had come
from his rendezvous on the Yellowstone River in 1825, and went
down the Humboldt, thence to the Walker River country, and to
the Tulare valley, California, through what was later known as
Walker's pass. He re-crossed the State on his return later, the
same year. For many years the Humboldt was known as either
Mary's River or Ogden River; in fact, it was always so called
until given its present name by Fremont. As it is generally
agreed that these several parties visited Nevada in 1825, the
question of precedence by a few weeks or months is of little
importance. After this, the State was frequently visited by
trappers, and in the course of the next sixteen years its
principal streams and the routes across it became fairly well
known to those hardy and adventurous men of the mountains.
Joseph Walker, detached from Bonneville's expedition, crossed
the State in 1833, and in December, 1843, and January, 1844,
Fremont passed through the western portion of the State,
skirting and naming Pyramid Lake, and bestowing on a river the
name of his guide, the famous Kit Carson. This river afterward
gave its name to the valley and later to the town now the
capital of Nevada. The first emigrants to cross the State were
those composing Captain J. B. Bartleson's party of thirty-five
persons, bound for California in 1841. They came by the way of
the South Pass and the Great Salt Lake, and followed the then
well-known trail down the Humboldt. They had no wagons, all
their goods being transported on pack animals. The Truckee River
was so named in 1844 by a party starting from Council Bluffs in
compliment to their Indian guide, who bore that name. In the
summer of 1846 it was estimated that three thousand persons
passed over the overland trail to Oregon and California. The
route then followed up the Platte and Sweetwater, through South
Pass and thence by Bear River to Fort Hall, where the Oregon and
California trails parted, the latter dropping southwest to the
Humboldt and down that stream. It was in the fall and winter of
this year that so many members of the ill-fated Donner party
perished of cold and hunger amid the deep snows of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains.
Up to this time Nevada had been
acknowledged Mexican territory, but now came the war between the
United States and Mexico, resulting in the cession by Mexico to
the United States, by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February
2, 1848, of all the country between the Gila River and the
forty-second parallel, and extending from the Rocky Mountains to
the Pacific Ocean. By agreement, the cession dated back to July
7, 1846, the date on which Commodore Sloat had raised the
American flag at Monterey. In 1847, Brigham Young and the Mormon
pioneers settled in Salt Lake valley. In the following year gold
was discovered at Sutter's-mill, in California, and in 1849 the
great California gold rush came and thousands of men from the
Eastern States poured through Nevada on the way to the land of
gold. In March, 1849, the Mormons, who had already become
numerous in the Salt Lake and adjacent valleys, organized what
they called the "State of Deseret," and claimed all the country
now included in Nevada, Utah and Arizona, southern California to
the ocean, and parts of what is now Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado,
and New Mexico. The so-called "State" was never recognized by
Congress, but that body, in 1850, admitted California as a State
with its present boundaries, and organized Utah Territory, which
included all of the present area of Nevada, except the point of
the State south of the thirty-seventh parallel.
In the meantime, the first white
settlement in the State had been made at Genoa, in what is now
Douglas County, by Mormons from Salt Lake valley. This
settlement was on the road to California, and was called "Mormon
Station." It seems to have been first established in June, 1850,
and is mentioned by many who passed that way in that year, but
when Stephen A. Kinsey, of Salt Lake, in the following year
selected the same site for a home and trading station on the
overland road, there was no one living there, and all buildings
and other evidences of previous occupancy had disappeared. From
this time on the settlement was permanent and within the next
two or three years a number of families settled in the vicinity.
The first land claims were legally filed in December, 1852, and
in 1854 a saw-mill and a grist-mill were built. The place was
called Mormon Station until surveyed in 1855, when the name w 7
as changed to Genoa. In 1852 a mail route was established from
Salt Lake to San Bernardino, and a station on the line was
erected at Las Vegas Springs, but it was abandoned after the
Mountain Meadows massacre in 1857.
Gold was discovered near Dayton early
in 1850, but as the workings were not as rich as those of
California, they never attracted a great deal of attention, and
Nevada did not become noted as a mining section until the
discovery of the Comstock lode in 1859, located for its gold by
placer gold miners who found it in following up the pay streak.
It developed into the greatest silver mine the world has ever
known. It has produced $325,000,000, of which $306,000,000 was
produced in the first twenty years that it was worked. There was
one year in which it yielded $38,000,000. As a whole, the values
consisted of about two-thirds silver and one-third gold.
With the mining discoveries of 1859,
there came trooping over the Sierra Nevada mountains a motley
population from California and the western border of the State
from Honey Lake, on the north, to Walker River, on the south,
which, up to that time, had been occupied by a few scattered
ranchers and placer miners, swarmed with miners, prospectors,
adventurers and gamblers. This influx of people induced Congress
to create the new Territory of Nevada from the western part of
Utah Territory, which was done March 2, 1861. At first the
eastern boundary was fixed at the 116th degree of longitude,
west from Greenwich, which left all the present counties of
Clark, Lincoln, and White Pine, most of Elko, and parts of
Eureka and Nye in Utah. In 1862, the line was moved east to the
115th, and March 21, 1864, again east to the 114th degree, and
at the same time the triangle between the 37th parallel and the
Colorado River w r as added from Arizona, and the act passed to
admit the State to the Union with its present boundaries.
The general geological character of
Nevada is volcanic, and it presents a more pronounced desert
aspect than any other division of the Union except Arizona. With
the exception of a small area in the north, which is drained by
the Owyhee, Bruneau, Salmon and other streams into the Snake
River, and the southeastern corner, which drains into the
Colorado, the entire State lies in the great basin, and its few
and comparatively feeble streams discharge into lakes or are
swallowed up in sinks amid the abounding sands of the valleys
and plains. This basin section of the State is the bed of an
ancient sea, whose shore lines can be distinctly traced in a
number of places. It is now mainly a plateau, with an average
elevation of perhaps 4000 feet. On this rise numerous mountain
ranges, in most cases running north and south, and varying in
elevation above the surrounding country from 1000 to 8000 feet.
These are separated by valleys from one to twenty-five miles in
width. This general condition is so marked a feature of the
State that its surface has been aptly likened to a corrugated
iron roof. These ranges are usually broken down or eroded at
intervals, but in many cases are continuous for hundreds of
miles. In many cases ranges have been worn away until only
isolated peaks of the hardest material remain. The valleys are
usually filled to a great depth with loose, sandy soil formed by
the volcanic ash and ancient sea deposits, together with the
more recent wash from the mountains and the dust deposit of
centuries of winds. The lowest portion of the State is the
extreme southern point, on the Colorado River, where the
elevation above sea level is but slightly over 500 feet. The
highest point is 13,058 feet, reached in Wheeler Peak, in the
Snake Range, about half-way along the eastern border.
Nevada, having but little rain and
not much snow, except in the mountains, has but few rivers, and
none of them are large. The Humboldt is the longest. It rises in
the northeastern part of the State, and flows southwest for
about 375 miles to Humboldt Lake. It has cut through all the
mountain ranges, in its length, thus affording the best path
across the State east and west. This was first taken advantage
of by the Indians and trappers, whose trails followed it. Later
the emigrant wagon road took the same route, then came the
Southern Pacific Railroad along the same path, and later the
Western Pacific, after trying in vain to get a satisfactory line
across the mountains elsewhere, was forced to get into the
Humboldt valley and parallel the Southern Pacific half-way
across the State. The Truckee is the outlet of Lake Tahoe, and
is a clear, bold stream, which, after a short course in the
plain, discharges into Pyramid Lake. Its basin includes a
considerable portion of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada,
where the snowfall is exceedingly heavy, and its annual flow
exceeds that of the Humboldt. The Carson and Walker flow into
lakes of the same name in the western part of the State. In the
north are several streams tributary to the Snake, and in the
southeast two unimportant ones, discharging into the Colorado.
Other than these, the only streams in the State are the creeks
issuing from the mountains and sinking in the sands or sinks in
the valleys. Many of these in spring and early summer are
veritable mountain torrents that flood large areas of the
adjacent valleys, forming shallow lakes many miles in extent.
Then in late summer and autumn the stream-bed may be only a dry
canyon, while the lake it fed soon disappears. Besides those of
a temporary character, Nevada has a number of permanent and
beautiful lakes. Pyramid Lake is the largest, with a length of
thirty-five miles and a width of ten miles. Lake Tahoe is on the
California line, at an elevation of 6225 feet, in a region of
mountain and forest. Because of its altitude, its great depth,
the clearness of its waters, and the remarkable beauty of its
surroundings, it is one of the foremost of American mountain
lakes. It is becoming a noted summer resort and is visited each
year by many tourists. Other important lakes are Walker,
Winnemucca, Humboldt, Carson and Snow Water lakes.
The climate of Nevada is dry, mild
and beautiful. The percentage of bright, sunny days is extremely
high, and severe winds are unusual. The average temperature for
January is about twenty-eight degrees and for July seventy-one
degrees. Great extremes of either cold or heat are not common,
and, when they do occur, are minimized by the dryness and tonic
qualities of the atmosphere. The State is the most arid in the
Union, the average precipitation being less than twelve inches,
and this is very unevenly distributed as to time and locality.
Nearly all the precipitation occurs between December and May. It
is much greater in the mountains, especially the higher ranges,
than in the valleys, and is about twice as great in the northern
as in the southern half of the State. In some of the valleys
rain seldom falls, and there are some sections of the southern
part of the State that are practically rainless. The way the
rains come in the open country of the southern triangle of the
State was well expressed by a stage-driver. When asked by a
passenger in what way, if it never rained there, the dry gulch
the stage was wearily toiling up had been formed, he replied:
"It only rains about once in fifteen years, and then w r e have
a cloudburst that floods the country."
Index
Source: Sketches of the Inter-Mountain
States, Utah, Idaho and Nevada, Published by The Salt Lake
Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1909
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