Nevada is known as a mining state due to its history of silver and gold mining, which began in the nineteenth century. However, the first miners in Nevada were Native Americans, starting perhaps more than 2000 years ago. Metals that were important in times that are more recent were not important to prehistoric miners, as there was no knowledge of smelting. Important minerals for mining included salt, turquoise, magnesite, and other minerals.

Nathan "Nick" Abelman was born in 1875 or 1876 to Yiddish-speaking parents and with various partners owned saloons in Bessemer, Michigan, and Hurley, Wisconsin, before joining the rush to Goldfield in 1906. There, also with a partner, he operated the Bon Ton saloon and also ran an auto livery service. He became well acquainted with Harry Stimler, who is credited with the discovery of gold in the area, and from whom Abelman learned the technicalities of locating mining sites.

What some consider Nevada's first Euro-American town appeared in the Carson Valley in 1850. Gold Rush fever had swept the nation, sending fortune-seekers streaming into California. The Humboldt Trail, one route west, crossed Northern Nevada and deposited prospectors at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. At this point a handful of Mormons established a trading post to provision road-weary travelers. Their success and the Comstock Lode's discovery soon attracted others, but Genoa and Dayton now competed for the title of the first American settlement in the western Great Basin.

Milton Benjamin Badt (1884-1966) considered himself a Nevadan although he was born in San Francisco and received most of his formal education in California. He established a law practice in Elko and became District Judge before his appointment to the Nevada Supreme Court in 1947. Paul Leonard, editor of the Elko Daily Free Press and the Nevada State Journal, characterized Badt "as brilliant a man as there'd ever been in the state of Nevada."