Nevada History & Heritage

The First to Call Nevada’s Great Basin Home

From the Fremont people and the Ancestral Puebloans to the Western Shoshone and Northern Paiutes, Nevada’s Great Basin has been home to American Indians for tens of thousands of years. A seafloor turned high desert, with all waters running inland and no outlet to an ocean, much of northern Nevada was once mostly covered in a prehistoric sea named Glacial Lake Lahontan. Since most valleys were once filled with water, and declining water levels formed marshland habitats, a large portion of Nevada’s first people lived in and around these areas, utilizing them as life sources for water, as well as hunting the plentiful birds and animals that were drawn to them. 

The Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone lived in the Carson and Humboldt Sinks—an area east of Fallon and southeast of Lovelock—as well as central Nevada’s Big Smoky Valley. The Fremont peoples lived on the outskirts of modern day Great Basin National Park, while the Ancestral Pueblo took shelter in the Mojave Desert in and around Moapa and the Las Vegas valleys. 

By the early 1900s, federal officials had designated dozens of Indian reservations throughout Nevada, including Duck Valley, Pyramid Lake, and Walker River to name a few. During that same time frame the federal government also created hundreds of boarding schools throughout the United States where American Indian children were forcefully relocated to be assimilated into mainstream American culture. One of these schools—the Stewart Indian School’s historic grounds—still stands in Carson City today, and represented 200 tribal nations from all over the west during the 90 years it was open. Its challenging historical trajectory and meaning is now reclaimed, serving has headquarters of the Nevada Indian Commission, housing a beautifully-done museum and cultural center.

From the Washoe to the Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Goshute nations and beyond, there are 27 Indian Reservations, Bands, and Colonies in Nevada today. 

Early European Exploration & Settlement in Nevada

Although several European-descended explorers would eventually travel to the Nevada territory, the first and most famous to map and document the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada regions was John C. Fremont. Following the Humboldt River, Fremont surveyed Nevada’s hundreds of basins and mountain ranges through many expeditions of the West. During his second expedition, he invited Kit Carson as a professional guide to help him navigate; together, they traversed Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe.

Their many subsequent treks throughout the West spanned more than a decade, from 1833 through 1844. Soon enough, droves of pioneers began making their way west to start new lives in the places these famous explorers surveyed, following Westward Expansion trails like the California Trail, including the famous Donner Party, who would make their ill-fated trek through Nevada in 1846. Today, many Nevada place names tip their hats to the role John C. Fremont and Kit Carson played in paving the way for the region’s eventual settlement, including Nevada’s capital city, Carson City, Las Vegas’ Fremont Street, and many more. 

The Comstock Lode & Becoming the Silver State

The California gold fields called more settlers west by the 1850s, bringing thousands upon thousands more pioneers to the Nevada Territory in hopes of finding fast fortunes. Nevada’s first permanent settlement was established, set against the foothills of the eastern Sierra Nevada in 1851. Under the direction of Utah governor Brigham Young, Nevada’s first non-native settlement was Mormon Station, which later became known as Genoa. 

With more and more people in the area hoping to strike it rich in and along the way to California, some pioneers tried their luck prospecting in Nevada’s creeks. Nevada’s first gold discovery happened in 1850 when a gold nugget was found along the Carson River, in what would soon become Dayton. Within a few years, many more placer miners began settling in the areas surrounding Dayton, working their way up Gold Canyon and into the mountains. As one of the biggest turn of events in Nevada history, a mysterious blue clay that kept getting in the way of their gold mining turned out to be silver, a realization that would lead to the largest silver strike in the world—at the time and to this day.  

Beneath the slope of Mount Davidson proved to be hundreds of millions of dollars in silver, dubbed the Comstock Lode upon its discovery in 1859, after the American miner Henry Comstock. Several towns formed in the area between Dayton and this massive silver cache, including Gold Hill, Silver City, and Virginia City, beckoning thousands upon thousands of the most qualified miners from around the globe.

This was certainly the biggest bonanza in Nevada history, earning the state its nickname: the “Silver State.” Soon enough, Nevada’s perfect gold, silver, copper, other precious metals, and valuable minerals were soon discovered all over the state, creating hundreds of boomtowns. The bounty of the Comstock Lode helped the Nevada Territory receive official statehood, just before Abraham Lincoln’s presidential election in 1864. And how’s this for some history? The Nevada State Constitution was transmitted by telegraph making the record books as the longest and most expensive telegram in U.S. history. The State of Nevada became official on October 31, 1864, as one of two states to gain statehood during the Civil War—with Nevada’s immense mineral wealth helping foot an outsized portion of the Union’s bills at a crucial time. 

State & National Historic Sites in Nevada

Thanks to the Silver State’s low population outside Reno and Vegas and ideal arid climate conditions, many of Nevada’s prehistoric sites, bygone boomtowns, and other historic places were naturally preserved until protected by the National Parks Service as historic landmarks on state and national registers.

Today the Great Basin remains dotted with Pony Express waystations, boomtowns turned ghost towns, dozens of Nevada State Parks, and even a National Historic Landmark designation for the entire town of Virginia City, due to its importance in state, national, and world history. From Hoover Dam, a modern marvel of the world, to the McKeen Motor Car, one of the only National Historic Landmarks that moves, you don’t have to be a diehard history hound to sink your canines into Nevada’s fascinating story. 

Sites on the Nevada State Register of Historic Places

Bowers Mansion All those people who made out like a bandit from the Comstock Lode? See it in action at Bowers Mansion, built by a couple who reaped the profits of Virginia City’s massive silver strike, then built an elaborate mansion in the valley below. 

David Walley’s Hot Springs Fortune did lie in Nevada’s gold and silver fields, and also in the therapeutic mineral waters found at this pre-statehood hot spring resort that used to be some of Mark Twain’s old splashin’ grounds.

Goldfield Hotel As one of Nevada’s most historic hotels—and reportedly most haunted—the once elaborate Goldfield Hotel is a must-see for history and paranormal lovers alike.

Tom Kelly Bottle House What happens when you use up all the (already not that many) trees around to build a railroad, but still wanna build a house? You use the only other building materials around—and in a boomtown with more than 50 saloons, that means empty beer and liquor bottles. Scope out the largest “bottle house”—made from thousands of soda, medicine, beer and whiskey bottles—in Rhyolite Ghost Town.  

The City of Churches When you hit Austin on your Loneliest Road adventure, keep an eye out for three historic churches. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, the 1856 St. Augustine’s Catholic Church underwent an impressive facelift and now serves as Austin’s Cultural Center.