The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that a shallow limestone shelf inside a Nevada cave deserved federal water protection because a fish found nowhere else on Earth needs it to spawn. Two earthquakes swept that same shelf clean in 2024 and 2025, and the population the court’s ruling was designed to protect crashed to… Continue reading The Supreme Court Ruled in 1976 That Groundwater Pumping Couldn’t Drain Devils Hole. Earthquakes in 2024 and 2025 Nearly Undid What the Ruling Protected.

Nevada gaming regulators refused a casino manager a license in 1976, citing his criminal record and testimony about corruption. It took another decade of federal investigation to prove the company that employed him was a front for organized crime — and the licensing power regulators used against him in 1976 is still the tool the… Continue reading Nevada Denied Frank Rosenthal a Gaming License in 1976. A Federal Case a Decade Later Proved the Casinos He Ran Were Mob-Owned All Along.

Nevada’s governor helped broker an end to Strip segregation in a single meeting at a shuttered casino in 1960. Sixty-six years later, the neighborhood that hosted that meeting is only beginning to see public investment on a comparable scale. The Moulin Rouge Hotel opened May 24, 1955, at 900 West Bonanza Road in Las Vegas,… Continue reading The Moulin Rouge Agreement Desegregated the Strip on March 26, 1960. The Historic Westside Is Only Now Getting Investment to Match It.

A federal decree written in 1936 to settle a fight between cattle ranchers and irrigators over the Walker River still controls who gets its water today, even as the tribe named in the original lawsuit presses an unresolved claim to a senior right and the lake the river once filled has lost more than 90… Continue reading Nevada Issued More Water Rights on the Walker River Than It Could Sustain in the 1800s. The 1936 Walker River Decree Still Governs Who Gets What.

Nevada built a five-member commission in 1965 to raise the training bar for local police. Six decades later, state law now hands that same commission a different job: checking whether an applicant already has a documented history of misconduct before it ever hands over a badge. Nevada’s 53rd Legislature passed Assembly Bill 390 in 1965,… Continue reading Nevada Created the Peace Officers’ Standards and Training Commission in 1965 With Five Members. A 2023 Law Now Makes It Search the National Decertification Index Before Certifying Anyone.

A trust fund jointly run by a union and the employers it bargains against has paid for Las Vegas hospitality workers’ health care since the 1960s, growing into one of Nevada’s largest health care purchasers along the way. Six decades later, some of the same workers the fund was built to serve are picketing the… Continue reading The Culinary Health Fund Began as a 1960s Taft-Hartley Trust for Las Vegas Hospitality Workers. Some of Those Workers Are Now Picketing Their Own Union’s Headquarters Over It.

Nevada’s gaming law has required anyone with a stake in a casino to disclose it to state regulators since the state began licensing casino owners at all. Two men ignored that requirement at the Frontier Hotel in the 1960s, and the federal case that followed still shapes how Nevada polices hidden casino ownership six decades… Continue reading Anthony Zerilli and Michael Polizzi Hid Their Stake in the Frontier Hotel in 1966. Nevada Still Enforces the Disclosure Law They Broke.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt set aside more than two million acres of Southern Nevada desert to save the region’s last desert bighorn sheep in 1936. Four years later, the War Department carved out more than a third of that land for bombing practice — land the Air Force is still using today, under a federal… Continue reading The War Department Carved a Bombing Range Out of Nevada’s Desert Game Range in 1940. The Desert National Wildlife Refuge Still Shares That Land With the Air Force Through 2046.

Archaeologists dug against a rising reservoir in the 1920s and 1930s to save what they could of an ancient pueblo complex in Nevada’s Moapa Valley before Lake Mead swallowed it. A century later, the federal government is working against a deadline of its own — one that opened this September — to send what those… Continue reading Archaeologists Named Nevada’s Flooded Pueblo Ruins ‘Pueblo Grande de Nevada’ in the 1920s. A Federal Notice Published This August Cleared the Way to Repatriate What They Found.

Nevada declared it the public policy of the state in 1961 to let every person seek housing without discrimination, then spent the next sixteen years deciding how, or whether, to enforce that policy. The gap between a declared right and an enforceable one is still the same gap a Las Vegas renter or home buyer… Continue reading Nevada Created Its Equal Rights Commission in 1961 to Guard Housing Rights. It Took 16 Years to Give the Commission Power to Investigate a Housing Complaint.