Clark County ran its sheriff’s department for eighteen years under one man, with no city government sharing his authority, no independent review board watching his conduct, and no check on the office beyond the same ballot that put him there. Nevada folded that arrangement into a single countywide police force in 1973, but the sheriff… Continue reading Nevada Appointed Ralph Lamb Clark County Sheriff in 1961. A Federal Indictment Cost Him the Job in 1978.

Nevada regulators drew the state’s first groundwater basin boundary in the Las Vegas Valley in 1941, seven years before anyone measured how far the valley floor beneath the pumps had already sunk. Eighty-five years later, the state is spending $62 million to build 93 new homes for a single North Las Vegas neighborhood that groundwater… Continue reading Groundwater Pumping Sank Parts of the Las Vegas Valley as Much as 6 Feet Starting in the 1930s. Nevada Is Now Spending $62 Million to Rebuild the Neighborhood It Broke.

Nevada recorded its first subdivision built by and for Black residents on May 17, 1954, when segregation confined most of Las Vegas’s Black population to the city’s Historic Westside. Seventy-two years later, Las Vegas ranks 43rd among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas for Black homeownership, and many of Berkley Square’s original 148 homes are… Continue reading Nevada Recorded Berkley Square, Its First Subdivision Built by and for Black Residents, on May 17, 1954. Las Vegas’s Black Homeownership Rate Still Ranks 43rd Among the Nation’s 50 Largest Metros.

A Las Vegas convention worker’s 2025 complaint against her own union rests on a law Nevada voters approved by barely a thousand votes seven decades earlier. The statute hasn’t moved since, but the fights over what it actually means keep landing in federal filings. The Nevada Legislature moved first. On March 14, 1951, lawmakers approved… Continue reading Nevada Voters Approved a Right-to-Work Law by 1,034 Votes on Nov. 4, 1952. A Convention Center Worker’s 2025 Complaint Tested What It Actually Bans.

Las Vegas police shot at fewer people in 2025 than in any of the previous five years, according to the department’s own count. That trajectory traces back to a federal review Las Vegas Metro accepted after a news investigation and a civil rights petition arrived within two months of each other in 2011 and 2012.… Continue reading A Federal Review of LVMPD Shootings Began in January 2012. Metro Just Reported Its Fewest Officer-Involved Shootings in at Least Five Years.

Ulysses S. Grant carved a reservation out of southeastern Nevada in 1873, built entirely around one river. A hundred and fifty-one years later, in 2024, a Nevada Supreme Court ruling over that same river’s groundwater settled how much control the state exercises over everyone who depends on it. President Ulysses S. Grant signed an executive… Continue reading President Grant Set Aside the Moapa River Reservation in 1873. Nevada’s Supreme Court Just Ruled on Who Controls the Water Beneath It.

Ruby Duncan turned a welfare cut into a march down the Las Vegas Strip in 1971, forcing a federal court to restore money the state had taken from poor mothers. She died April 26 at 93, the same year Clark County wrote her fight into its commemoration of the United States’ 250th anniversary. Duncan was… Continue reading A Las Vegas Welfare-Rights March Shut Down Caesars Palace on March 6, 1971. Ruby Duncan, Who Led It, Died This April.

Nevada’s Office of the State Engineer designated the Las Vegas Valley an underground artesian water basin on Jan. 10, 1941, giving the state its first legal hold on water most Southern Nevadans never saw flowing beneath their feet. Eighty-five years and one uncertain new federal Colorado River framework later, that same basin — closed to… Continue reading Nevada’s State Engineer Designated the Las Vegas Valley an Underground Water Basin on Jan. 10, 1941. It’s Been Closed to New Rights Since 1992.

Nevada’s Tax Commission was already screening casino owners for fitness by the time Benny Binion applied for a Las Vegas gaming license in 1951. Regulators approved a license for his casino in other men’s names, and Binion ran the place without one of his own for the rest of his life — the same suitability-finding… Continue reading Nevada Licensed the Horseshoe Club to Three Other Men on Dec. 1, 1951. Benny Binion Ran It Unlicensed for the Next Four Decades.

Las Vegas wrote its own uniformed enforcement authority into city law within three years of incorporating in 1911, well before the county ever had a police force of its own. More than a century later, the city still employs its own Deputy City Marshals under that same authority — patrolling Fremont Street and clearing homeless… Continue reading Las Vegas Incorporated With Its Own Police Power on March 16, 1911. Its Deputy City Marshals Still Patrol Alongside LVMPD in 2026.