Fun:Nevada

Despite being near California, Nevada is largely barren.

Wild horses couldn't drag me away?

Nevada is an immoral, arid quadrilateral of land in the southwestern United States. It is essentially Las Vegas ("Lost Wages") with a huge chunk of empty radioactive desert stuck on top. Nevada was used for above ground nuclear bomb tests because it is mostly uninhabited.

Nevada is Las Vegas, Area 51 and tumbleweed. And Reno. And, er...

Reasons

This patch of parchland is notorious for several reasons:

• Gambling is legal.
• Prostitution is legal.
• Alcohol is sold 24 hours a day.
• Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the country, despite having no natural resources or fresh water has the highest foreclosure rate of any major city in the country.
• Nobody who lives in Nevada is actually from Nevada. Seriously, walk into any bank or restaurant and the nametags all have the name and where they moved to Nevada from.
• Areas that are heavily irradiated from Cold War-era atmospheric nuclear tests.
• The annual Burning Man festival — because doing that shit elsewhere could be a crime
• An underground alien landing base
• An unincorporated town of over 200,000 people claims to be part of Las Vegas, and is really just a massive tax dodge. It avoids becoming a city or merging into Las Vegas because it's virtually nothing but casinos, meaning they can pretty much fund anything they'd need to be a city for, including a de facto police force.
• They tried to create a county where literally no one lives for the sole purpose of jacking up property taxes so they could make the most money possible off of whatever the federal government would put there.
• The vast majority of Nevada is in the Great Basin, meaning that the rain that falls there will never reach an ocean. Given the region's aridity, this means that fresh water is incredibly limited, which explains why most of the state is virtually uninhabited.
• Contrary to popular belief, Las Vegas is not responsible for the sharp decline in Lake Mead's water levels; that would be California.

Nevada Territory was once a much smaller area than was eventually admitted to the union as the state of Nevada. During the American Civil War, it was deemed important to admit a new non-slavery state or two to the union, Nevada's silver deposits were needed to finance the war, and neighboring Utah Territory was rumored to be a hotbed of secessionist sentiment by Mormons who wanted to take advantage of the Civil War to secede from the union and start their own country, Deseret. A large chunk of western Utah Territory was added to then-Nevada Territory to form the new state (take that, Mormons!). Nevada was admitted without having the required number of residents at the time to form a new state.

Nevadans of note

• Harry Reid, former Senate majority leader
• Sharron Angle

Fun things to do in Clark County that don't involve gambling

Okie, here's what you do. Git yerself a pan. And an old Filson hat. And a pick. And a mule. (The mule is optional.) Find yerself a crick. Pretend it's 1870 and you're an old prospector. Start panning for silver and...hey wait a minute, that's gambling, isn't it?

Take a bath in the Las Vegas real estate market, and...hey, wait a minute, that's gambling too.

Mount Charleston is a nice snowy, cool, forested getaway from the oppressive heat of Las Vegas. Don't bother trying to buy a home up there though, because if you have to ask how much one costs, you can't afford it.

Blue Diamond has 282 hippies and about 5000 feral donkeys.

Henderson, which has gone from "Hendertucky" (from the influx of Southerners into the 1990s) to the massive suburban sprawl it is now, actually has a historical museum that isn't part of a casino.

Boulder City is a great place to sit in your backyard and peer down on Hoover Dam Boulder Dam Hoover Dam, where with the aid of binoculars you can ogle tourists and keep a close watch out for any terrorist activity. The dam has something to do with Herbert Hoover, but we're not sure what. If you take a dam tour, make sure you keep up with the dam group and take all the dam pictures you want.

Nelson is south of Boulder City, which is a great place to hide out from the New World Order (it did in fact function as such a hideout during the Civil War for both Confederate and Union troops); a little further south is Searchlight, whence comes Senator Harry Reid, the former leader of the Free World.

South of Searchlight can be found the thriving hamlet of Laughlin, best known for the occasional shootout involving the Hells Angels.

Squirrels, unfortunately, quickly find the hot dry climate and the lack of trees inhospitable and move on to more inviting areas.

Nevada in popliar^[sic] culture

• Viva Las Vegas!
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson.
• Leaving Las Vegas: Nicolas Cage's best movie appearance is also his most depressing
• The original CSI
• In the 50s, one of Las Vegas' attractions was open air nuclear bomb tests.
• "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" — along with your money (they don't call it Lost Wages for nothing)
• Reno apparently has some really inept cops.
• Robert Urich as a private investigator driving a red 1957 Ford Thunderbird during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
• Bill Maher thinks "Vegas was better when the Mob ran it".
• Area 51 is north-northwest of Las Vegas and can be reached by driving toward Tonopah and turning right at [THIS SECTION DELETED BY THE U.S. DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY].
• Pahrump, Nevada, also known as the Kingdom of Nye, home of Art Bell when he isn't in the Phillipines.
• Virginia City has a very touristy pub with the awesome name of the Bucket of Blood Saloon.[1]
• Dayton, Nevada, in addition to its well-earned reputation as a dead-end shithole, is also known as the home to the Republic of Molossia, still losing a war against the now-defunct state of East Germany. The territorial dispute with Mustachistan has, however, been resolved.
• Winnemucca is NOT pronounced "win-a-much-a" and its name predates legal gambling in the state.
• "In a beautiful gesture by the beautiful people of beautiful downtown Goldfield, this radio station was named Kowalski, in honor of the last American Hero...for whom speed means freedom of the soul...the question is not when he's gonna stop, but who is gonna stop him."
• The worst traffic in the state is the steady stream of cars headed to and from Wendover every weekend from the neighboring state of Utah. Hmm...
• In a 2001 article, Battle Mountain was named by Washington Post Magazine writer Gene Weingarten as “The Armpit of America”.

Gallery

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  What it looks like outside of Vegas and Reno.

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  Viva Las Vegas!

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  Pyramid Lake, a typical watershed in the Great Basin

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  A legal brothel in Nye County.

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  Great Basin National Park

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  "Reno, the biggest little city in the world", whatever that means.

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  Rawhide in 1908.

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  Wild mustangs near Reno.