Also see Specific Destinations, Travel and Location Humor.

Page Toppers

• Leaving Las Vegas
• Nevada Moon
• Nevada Nights
• Nevada Skies
• New Moon Over Nevada
• Sands of Nevada
• Viva Las Vegas

Quotes

• I like theme parks. The fastest roller coaster I've ever been on is at a casino in Nevada. (Tia Carrere)
• I was born and raised in the high desert of Nevada in a tiny town called Searchlight. My dad was a hard rock miner. My mom took in wash. I grew up around people of strong values--even if they rarely talked about them. (Harry Reid)
• Las Vegas: all the amenities of modern society in a habitat unfit to grow a tomato. (Jason Love)
• Las Vegas is the only town in the world whose skyline is made up neither of buildings, like New York, nor of trees, like Wilbraham, Massachusetts, but signs. (Tom Wolfe)
• Las Vegas looks the way you'd imagine heaven must look at night. (Chuck Palahniuk)
• Many a man who goes to Las Vegas to get away from it all soon finds that Las Vegas gets it all away from him. (Evan Esar)
• The night before I left Las Vegas I walked out in the desert to look at the moon. There was a jeweled city on the horizon, spires rising in the night, but the jewels were diadems of electric and the spires were the neon of signs ten stories high. (Norman Mailer)

Nevada Symbols

• Nicknames: The Sagebrush State; The Silver State; The Mining State; The Sage-Hen state
• Motto: All for our country
• Slogan: Battle Born
• Tourist Slogan: Discover Both Sides of Nevada
• Colors: Silver and Blue
• Song: Home Means Nevada
• Animal: Desert Bighorn Sheep
• Bird: Mountain Bluebird
• Fish: Lahontan Cutthroat Trout
• Reptile: Desert Tortoise
• Tree: Bristlecone Pine and Single-leaf Pinon
• Flower: Sagebrush
• Grass: Indian Rice Grass
• Fossil: Ichthyosaur
• Gemstone: Black Fire Opal and Nevada Turquoise
• Mineral: Silver
• Rock: Sandstone

Facts About Nevada

• Capital: Carson City
• Residents: Nevadans
• State Name Origin: named for a Spanish word meaning "snowcapped"
• Admitted to Statehood: 31 Oct 1864
• Order of Admission: 36th state
• Length: 490 miles
• Width: 320 miles
• Area: 110,561 square miles
• Size Rank: 7
• Number of Counties: 17
• Streams and Rivers: 143,578 miles
• Geographic Center: 26 miles SE of Austin in Lander Co.
• Mean Elevation: 5,500 feet
• Highest Point: Boundary Peak, 13,143 feet
• Lowest Point: Colorado River, 470 feet
• Agricultural Products: hay, alfalfa seed, barley, wheat, potatoes, other food products, cattle
• Commercial Products: gaming equipment and gambling, lawn irrigation devices, titanium products, seismic monitoring devices, gold, silver, plastics, chemicals
• Average Annual Rainfall: NV is the driest state with an average annual rainfall of about 7 inches. The wettest part of state receives about 40 inches, the driest spot receives less than four inches.
• Average Winter High Temperature: 19 degrees
• Record Low Temperature: -50 degrees (8 Jan 1937 San Jacinto)
• Average Summer High Temperature: 100 degrees
• Record High Temperature: 125 degrees (29 Jun 1994 Laughlin)
• Official Language: English
• More information about Nevada

Page Idea

Use the Black Cityscape die-cut along the bottom of the Las Vegas page and trace around the buildings with the orange fine tip pen and green, pink and purple wide tip pens to give the illusion of neon lights.

Home Means Nevada

(words and music by Bertha Raffetto)

Way out in the land of the setting sun,
Where the wind blows wild and free,
There's a lovely spot, just the only one
That means home sweet home to me.
If you follow the old Kit Carson trail,
Until desert meets the hills,
Oh you certainly will agree with me,
It's the place of a thousand thrills.

Chorus:
Home means Nevada
Home means the hills,
Home means the sage and the pine.
Out by the Truckee, silvery rills,
Out where the sun always shines,
Here is the land which I love the best,
Fairer than all I can see.
Deep in the heart of the golden west
Home means Nevada to me.

Whenever the sun at the close of day,
Colors all the western sky,
Oh my heart returns to the desert grey
And the mountains tow'ring high.
Where the moon beams play in shadowed glen,
With the spotted fawn and doe,
All the live long night until morning light,
Is the loveliest place I know.
(Repeat Chorus)

Items of Interest

• The Imperial Palace on the Las Vegas strip is the nation's first off-airport airline baggage check-in service.
• Pershing County located in Cowboy Country features one of two round courthouses in the U.S. (the other is the Bucks County Courthouse PA).
• In Death Valley, the Kangaroo Rat can live its entire life without drinking a drop of liquid.
• Austin's oldest church, St. Augustine, requires the bells in the tower be rung by pulling a rope in the men's restroom.
• Nevada has more mountain ranges than any other state.
• Nevada is the largest gold-producing state in the nation. It is second in the world behind South Africa.
• Hoover Dam, the largest single public works project in the history of the United States, contains 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete, which is enough to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. Construction worker Hard Hat's were first invented specifically for workers on the Hoover Dam in 1933.
• Highway 50 is known as the Loneliest Highway in America because there are very few road stops in the 287 mile stretch between Ely and Fernley.
• Elko is the home of the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering.
• Camels were used as pack animals in Nevada as late as 1870.
• To drive from Los Angeles, CA to Reno, NV, you travel west.
• Las Vegas has more hotel rooms than any other place on earth.
• The longest Morse code telegram ever sent was the Nevada state constitution. Sent from Carson City to Washington D.C. in 1864. The transmission would have taken several hours.

Notable Natives

Some of these were born here, others just lived a while in the state.

• Andre Agassi (1970- ) - tennis player (Las Vegas)
• Ben Alexander (1911-1969) - actor (Garfield)
• Henry Fountain Ashurst - politician (Winnemucca)
• Helen Delich Bentley - newspaperwoman (Ruth)
• James Hubert Bilbray - politician (Las Vegas)
• Clara Bow - actress
• James E. Casey (1888-1983) - founder of UPS (Candelaria)
• Hobart Cavanaugh - actor (Virginia City)
• Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1909-1971) - author (grew up in Reno)
• Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain - author, reporter (moved to Virginia City in 1862)
• Abby Dalton - actress (Las Vegas)
• Jack Dempsey - boxer, bartender and bouncer at the Mispah Casino in Tonopah
• Wyatt Earp - lawman, folk hero, sheriff of Tonopah
• Charles Fey - invented the slot machine in 1899
• James A. Gibbons - politician (Sparks)
• Jack Kramer (1921- ) - tennis player (Las Vegas)
• Paul Laxalt - politician (Reno)
• Greg LeMond (1961- ) - champion bicyclist, won the Tour de France (raised in Washoe Valley)
• Phyllis McGuire - singer
• Thelma Patricia "Pat" Ryan Nixon (1912-1993) - wife of president Richard Nixon (Ely)
• Lute Pease - Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist
• Edna Purviance (1895-1958) - silent film actress (Paradise Valley)
• Harry M. Reid - politician (Searchlight)
• David Derek Stacton - author (Minden)
• Orson Wells - actor, author, film producer
• Joe Williams - jazz singer
• Jack Wilson (1856-1932) - Paiute prophet (Esmeralda county)
• Sarah Hopkins Winnemucca (1844-1891) - author, Paiute interpreter, peacemaker (Humboldt River)

The Nevada State Flag
The flag background is cobalt blue. In the upper left hand corner is a five-pointed silver star (representing mineral resources) between two sprays of sagebrush (state flower) in a semi-circular design. Across the top is a golden scroll with the words, "Battle Born." The name "Nevada" is beneath the star in gold letters. The flag design was adopted in 1929 and revised slightly in 1991.

You know you are from Nevada if...

• You prefer In and Out to McDonalds and Del Taco to Taco Bell.
• You can count cards.
• You know that prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas.
• You've wondered if your cab ride will end up on Taxi Cab Confessions.
• More of your friends were born in California than Nevada.
• Your car's overheated--before you started driving.
• You know what all the combinations mean on a slot machine.
• You don't answer the phone during UNLV basketball.
• You see more billboards than trees on the road.
• You've seen a red leather male chastity belt in full color on the front page of the living section.
• You have legal brothels within a half hour's drive of your state legislature.
• You have a smoking section in your supermarket.
• You have ever thought New Jersey sounded like a nice, wholesome place to visit.
• You know that Pahrump is not actually the punchline of a bad joke. At least, not always.
• You know which one is Roy and which one is Siegfried.
• Your car payment is higher than your rent.
• You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Nevada.

Songs about Nevada

• Home Means Nevada - Michael Eardley (2008)
• Nevada Girls - The Bunkhouse Orchestra (1996)
• Nevada Moon - Rosalie Sorrels (1995)
• Nevada Skies - Lorie Line (1999)
• New Moon Over Nevada - Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (1944)
• Sands of Nevada - Mark Knopfler (2000)

Songs about Las Vegas

• Las Vegas - Tony Christie (1971)
• Las Vegas Girl - Leroy Van Dyke (1977)
• Leaving Las Vegas - Sheryl Crow (1994)
• T-Bird to Vegas - Albert Lee (1987)
• Vegas Two Times - Stereophonics (2002)
• Viva Las Vegas - ZZ Top (1992)

Songs about Reno

• All the Way to Reno - REM (2001)
• Just Another Night in Reno - New Riders of the Purple Sage (1977)
• Reno - Doug Supernaw (1993)
• Reno Bound - Southern Pacific (1986)
• Roses to Reno - Eddy Arnold (1971)