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.

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.