Washington kept its 1874 promise to the Agai Dicutta people down to the acre. It never made the same promise to the lake that promise was built around, and the lake has been paying for it ever since. The land around Walker Lake, then part of the Utah Territory, was set aside for “Indian purposes”… Continue reading President Grant Set Aside the Walker River Reservation by Executive Order on March 19, 1874. Upstream Irrigation Has Dropped the Lake Inside It 150 Feet Since 1882.

A single bill, passed in the final weeks of the 1931 Legislature with almost no opposition, turned every county in Nevada into licensed gambling territory overnight. The state did not ask who was actually running the games for another 24 years — and the regulatory machine built to close that gap is the same one… Continue reading Nevada Legalized Gambling in a Single Day in 1931. It Took the State 24 Years to Ask Who Was Running the Games.

A Las Vegas rancher deeded ten acres of her property to the federal government in 1911, placing it in trust for a small band of Southern Paiute people living near the springs that gave the city its name. That same ten-acre parcel, a few blocks north of the Fremont Street Experience, now holds one of… Continue reading Helen Stewart Deeded 10 Acres to the United States for the Las Vegas Paiute Colony on Dec. 30, 1911. That Same Parcel Now Hosts One of Nevada’s First Cannabis Lounges.

A U.S. Senate committee investigating organized crime’s reach into gambling spent barely a single day in Las Vegas in November 1950, and left having accomplished almost nothing it set out to do. Nevada did not wait for Washington to finish the job. Within five years, the state built its own licensing police force, and that… Continue reading A U.S. Senate Committee on Organized Crime Spent One Day in Las Vegas on Nov. 15, 1950. Nevada’s Own Gaming Police Still Run a $4 Billion-a-Quarter Industry.

Welfare rights organizers in West Las Vegas built their own anti-poverty infrastructure in 1972 rather than wait on Washington, including a program that put food assistance directly into the hands of pregnant women and new mothers. More than 50 years later, a federal government shutdown put that same program’s funding in Nevada at risk, and… Continue reading Welfare Rights Organizers Founded Operation Life in West Las Vegas in 1972. It Once Administered WIC Benefits That a 2025 Federal Shutdown Put at Risk.

Nevada wrote one law in 1973 to merge overlapping city and county police agencies into a single department. More than 50 years later, three police departments inside the same Las Vegas Valley still haven’t used it, and Washoe County’s sheriff is now citing that same law as one path toward merging with Reno. The Nevada… Continue reading Nevada Wrote One Law in 1973 to Merge City and County Police. Three Las Vegas Valley Departments Never Used It, and Washoe County Is Studying It Now.

The United States has never purchased the ground it has used for nuclear weapons testing and, for decades, has studied as a nuclear waste dump in the desert northwest of Las Vegas. It only promised the Western Shoshone peace. That unresolved treaty question is still being cited today in Nevada’s fight against burying nuclear waste… Continue reading The 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley Promised the Western Shoshone Peace, Not a Land Cession. Nevada’s Nuclear Test Site Still Sits Inside That Treaty Territory Today.

Six years, four months and 10 days is how long it took the Culinary Union to outlast a single Strip hotel owner’s refusal to bargain. Every Culinary contract signed on the Strip since has been negotiated in the shadow of that fact. On Sept. 21, 1991, hospitality workers walked off the job at the New… Continue reading Culinary Workers Walked Out of the New Frontier Hotel on Sept. 21, 1991. The Strike Lasted Six Years, Four Months and 10 Days Before Phil Ruffin Bought the Property.

Whether land next to Red Rock Canyon can be developed has come down to one constitutional question for more than two decades: can Nevada’s Legislature single out one piece of Clark County and freeze its zoning by statute? The Nevada Supreme Court answered no in 2013, and that ruling — not any new law —… Continue reading Nevada Lawmakers Passed a Law in 2003 to Permanently Protect Land Next to Red Rock Canyon. The Nevada Supreme Court Struck It Down a Decade Later.

Nevada’s governor still issues an annual proclamation for a meeting that took place at a Las Vegas hotel on March 26, 1960. The agreement reached that day opened Strip and downtown casinos to Black customers for the first time — not through a court ruling, but through a negotiation brokered under the threat of a… Continue reading The NAACP Threatened a Las Vegas Strip March in 1960. The Moulin Rouge Agreement That Stopped It Still Gets Its Own Nevada Proclamation.