Places
James Warren Nye
Nevada's only territorial governor, James Warren Nye, was born in New York on June 10, 1814 or 1815, the seventh of ten children. Nye was educated at home and attended Hamilton Seminary for one term. He worked as a stagecoach driver for four years before studying law. Nye passed the New York... more
James Lawrence
Places: Douglas County, Northern Nevada
James A. "Jim" Lawrence pursued careers in both commercial photography and advertising in San Francisco before settling in Nevada in 1949. Lawrence, primarily a watercolorist, and his wife, Gerri, also a painter, established their home/studios at Rock Creek Ranch outside of Gardnerville,... more
James Graham Fair
Places: Virginia City, Storey County, Northern Nevada
James Fair is credited with discovering the Big Bonanza, one of the richest pockets of gold and silver on the Comstock Lode. He used his wealth to secure a seat in the U.S. Senate. Born in Northern Ireland in 1831 to Scots-Irish parents, Fair immigrated with his family to the United States when he... more
James Finney
Places: Storey County, Northern Nevada
James "Old Virginny" Finney, born in Virginia in approximately 1817, is credited with discovering the Comstock Lode. Traveling west, he became one of the first of several hundred placer miners in Gold Canyon during the 1850s. In January 1859, Finney, Alec Henderson, Jack Yount, and John... more
James Edward Church
Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada
Born in Holly, Michigan, February 25, 1869, Dr. James Church came to Nevada in 1892 to teach Latin and German, literature, and art appreciation. Despite initial misgivings about Reno, both its dramatic surrounding high mountain desert and its sometimes rough downtown, Dr. Church stayed. In 1894 he... more
Jacob Sheyer, Resident Rabbi of Carson City
Places: Northern Nevada
Rabbis in the West often required an alternative source of income because their constituency was often quite small. Jacob Sheyer, rabbi and merchant, had business interests in Marysville, California, and in Carson City as early as 1863. Sheyer had the longest tenure of any rabbi in Nevada in... more
Jacob Dodson
Jacob Dodson was an African-American member of John C. Fremont's group of explorers who traversed Nevada in the mid-1840s. As such, he is, with Peter Ranne, one of the first known persons of African descent to enter the territory now known as Nevada.Dodson, a free black, was employed as Fremont... more
Jacob Davis and the Copper-riveted Jeans
Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada
Although the Levi Strauss name is indelibly associated with copper-riveted jeans, it was Jacob W. Davis who first fabricated them at his Reno shop in 1871. After several legal battles, he and Strauss jointly won patent rights to the invention, and Davis supervised their manufacture in San Francisco... more
Jackpot
Places: Elko County, Northern Nevada
The town of Jackpot, which sits on Nevada's northeastern border, began to emerge after Idaho outlawed slot machines in 1953. The Horseshu Club was built in 1954, and it was followed by the establishment of Cactus Pete's two years later. The two casinos immediately drew customers from Idaho... more
J. David Hoggard, Sr.
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
J. David Hoggard, Sr. fell in love with Las Vegas during a short stint at Nellis Air Force Base (formerly known as the Las Vegas Army Air Corps Gunnery School) toward the end of World War II, and went on to play an important role in the police department and the community.Hoggard hailed from New... more
Italianate Style Architecture in Nevada
The Italianate style drew its inspiration from informal Italian villas. It began in England as part of the Picturesque movement, which was a reaction to the formal classical ideals in art and architecture. In America, the style was popularized by architectural pattern books.Designers in the... more
Italian and Swiss Immigrants: Nineteenth-Century
The 1860 federal census reveals thirteen Italians and three Swiss Italians in the part of Utah Territory that would become Nevada. All of these immigrants were men and ten were miners. It was an inauspicious beginning for an ethnic group that would eventually play a dominant role in the state.... more
Islam in Nevada
In the mid-twentieth century, the number of identifiable Muslims in Nevada was limited to a few professionals in the north and, in Las Vegas, a small cluster of African-Americans affiliated with Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. Since then, Islam in Reno organized itself as the Northern Nevada... more
Irish Immigrants: Nineteenth-Century
Places: Virginia City, Storey County, Northern Nevada
Popular imagination links the Irish with the building of America's transcontinental railroad. Irish track layers dominated the westward push in answer to their largely Chinese counterparts heading east from California. Nevertheless, most Irish in early Nevada were miners with no railroad... more
Ione
Places: Nye County, Southern Nevada
Silver discoveries at Union Canyon in the Shoshone Mountains by P. A. Havens in 1863 led to the formation of Ione. In 1864, Ione was named the first county seat for Nye County. At that time, the town had a population of 600 and more than one hundred buildings. The combination of low mine production... more
International Hotel
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
The International Hotel, known today as the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, was the first "megaresort" built in Las Vegas and set new standards for future resorts. The largest hotel and casino in the world when it opened in 1969, it was where pop singer Elvis Presley would perform... more
International Community of Christ
Places: Reno, Washoe County, Northern Nevada
The International Community of Christ has had a presence in Northern Nevada since its founder, Douglas Eugene “Gene” Savoy—an American explorer of pre-Columbian cultures, theologian, and author—established its permanent North American headquarters in Reno in 1972. The church... more
Initiative
The "Progressive Era" of American political reform (1890s through 1920s) brought three populist provisions to the Nevada Constitution: initiative, referendum, and recall. The initiative process enables voters to propose and enact laws by a vote of the people. In 1909 and again in 1911, as... more
Idah Meacham Strobridge
Idah Meacham Strobridge deserves her identification as the "first woman of Nevada letters" for the vivid evocation of the Great Basin and its people in her books In Miners' Mirage-Land (1904), The Loom of the Desert (1907) and The Land of Purple Shadows (1909). And the facts of her... more
Ichthyosaurs
Places: Nye County, Southern Nevada
Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park is located near the center of Nevada, among the pinyon pines and junipers of the Shoshone Mountains, off a path already off the beaten path. This odd, remote park pairs the ghost town of Berlin, a silver and gold mining center in the late nineteenth century and early... more
Ice Age Nevada and Lake Lahontan
Places: Churchill County, Northern Nevada
Between about 25,000 and 11,000 years ago, Nevada's late ice age climate was much cooler and wetter than today. While glaciers only occupied mountain ranges, much of the vegetation was similar to that of today, although it was found in different settings. This interval represents the end of the... more
Hunter Stockton Thompson
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
Journalist-anarchist Hunter Stockton Thompson (a.k.a. Dr. Gonzo and Raoul Duke) came of age in the 1960s with New Journalism—a reporting style that, according to writer Tom Wolfe, uses scene by scene description, complete dialogue, third person point-of-view, and careful reporting of everyday... more
Humboldt County Courthouse
Places: Winnemucca, Humboldt County, Northern Nevada
Established in 1861, Humboldt County took its name from the Humboldt River, which runs through the territory. The river itself was named after Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt. Although the first county seat was located in Unionville, officials did not build a permanent courthouse... more
Howard W. Cannon and Deregulation
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
Nevada has played a crucial role in the creation of modern commercial aviation. In 1978, United States Senator Howard W. Cannon successfully sponsored the first bill deregulating the commercial airline industry, changing forever the face of aviation as we know it.In 1934, Cannon became interested... more
Howard Hughes
Places: Clark County, Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was the reclusive billionaire, airline owner, aviator, government contractor, and film producer who would have a major impact on the future of Las Vegas after moving there in 1966. By the late 1960s, he owned six casinos on the Las Vegas Strip as well as other hotel-... more