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Wild West Sights Under A Sea of Stars Queen of the Silver Camps Tonopah, Nevada: also known as the starting point for some of the best memories you’ll ever make. […]

It seems unlikely that the California Gold Rush would spawn Nevada’s first Jewish synagogue. Yet, that’s where Temple Emanu-El’s story begins. 

Jewish merchants from the East Coast and Europe joined the mass migration to California in the late 1840s, seeking prosperity as suppliers of goods and services just as they had done back home. When The Comstock Lode hit in 1859, hundreds of merchants headed east to Nevada, settling at what was then called Fuller’s Crossing, a hospitable location for receiving merchandise from San Francisco. Arrival of the Central Pacific Railroad in 1868 made the community—now renamed Reno—an economic hub, and the Jewish community was there to stay. 

Kicked off by a block party, the Tonopah Speedway OHV Poker Run & Street Dance is a family-friendly adventure into the wide-open desert surrounding the “Queen of the Silver Camps.”

More than 100 years ago, southern Nevada pioneers and prospectors spent every day surviving on the razor-edge of death. Mucking, sweating, and blasting in sweltering summers and stinging winters. They moved earth as they dug their dwellings into the sides of mountains, sleeping in ramshackle huts made of rock and wood. They tossed fire and brimstone over their shoulders with shovels and pickaxes as they sought to manifest their destiny. They took up arms against Mother Nature, who tried her hardest each and every day to convince them that living there wasn’t worth it, but they only thumbed their noses and kept digging.

They don’t call Las Vegas the “Entertainment Capital of the World” for nothing. Find out why when we say, “What happens here, only happens here,” we really mean it.

Get ready to really put the “trip” road trip, visiting kaleidoscopic boulder towers, a forest of junk cars, a ghost town sculpture garden & other art-tastic, oddball attractions.

From Wild West gunmen and mining-era lady entrepreneurs to historical celebrities like Mark Twain and Howard Hughes, get up close and personal with some of the larger-than-life personalities who helped shape Nevada’s, and discover where to follow in their footsteps today. Come meet some Legendary Nevadans.

On a fine spring day in the year 1900, a rancher named Jim Butler was wandering the remote hills of south-central Nevada—looking for a stray burro, as the story goes—when he came across an outcrop of black-banded rock. Ever the hobbyist prospector, Butler picked off a few samples and headed back to civilization to get them evaluated. The assayer was shocked to discover that the black bands were pure argentite. Jim Butler had discovered one of history’s richest silver deposits.

In 1910, the penalty for stealing (or kidnapping) a girl in Nevada was five years in prison or a fine of $2,000, while anyone convicted of stealing a horse could be imprisoned for 14 years. At the same time, if a U.S. woman married a foreigner, she lost her citizenship. Another law during the early 1900s, this one concerning community property between a husband and wife, allowed a man to sell or will community property without the consent of his wife. And finally, any wages a woman earned while living with her husband were not deemed her property unless her husband allowed her to use the wages, which were then considered a gift from him. 

The rancor felt about the above-noted laws being created without any say from female constituents was growing, and the cry of “taxation without representation” was reborn. While that sentiment was enough to ignite the American Revolution, it sparked little fire with the male citizens of the young nation. It took until 1920 before half of the citizens of the U.S. were granted the right to vote. But the fight began long before. 

For 100 years, streetlights have illuminated Genoa—Nevada’s oldest settlement—thanks to a group of dedicated townsfolk.
In 1919, Lillian Virgin Finnegan and her aunt Jane Raycraft Campbell encouraged the 200 or so townspeople to hold a dance in what is now the Genoa Town Hall to raise funds for streetlights. Young ladies passed trays of free homemade candy, and after the dance, a midnight supper was served at the Raycraft Hotel.
Today, on the last full weekend of September, Genoans make and sell candy for the two-day Candy Dance Arts and Crafts Faire, which draws between 30,000 and 50,000 visitors to the town, population around 900.