Nevada Fun Facts and Trivia

Nevada Fun Facts and Trivia

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In Death Valley, the Kangaroo Rat can live its entire life without drinking a drop of liquid.

It is illegal to drive a camel on the highway.

The Imperial Palace on the Las Vegas strip was the nation's first off-airport airline baggage check-in service.

To drive from Los Angeles, California to Reno, Nevada the direction traveled is to the west.

Construction worker Hard Hat's were first invented specifically for workers on the Hoover Dam in 1933.

Las Vegas has more hotel rooms than any other place on earth.

Kangaroo Rat

In Nevada sex without a condom is considered illegal.

Bertha was a performing elephant that entertained for 37 years at John Ascuaga's Nugget casino located in Sparks. She was 48 years old when she died.

There were 16,067 slots in Nevada in 1960. In 1999 Nevada had 205,726 slot machines, one for every 10 residents.

In Reno, sex toys are illegal.

While Samuel Clemens took the penname "Mark Twain" as a reporter working for the "Territorial Enterprise," he began his writing career as a reporter in the Midwest some years before moving to Virginia City in 1862.

In 1931 the Pair-O-Dice Club was the first casino to open on Highway 91, the future Las Vegas Strip.

In Tonopah the young Jack Dempsey was once the bartender and the bouncer at the still popular Mispah Hotel and Casino. Famous lawman and folk hero Wyatt Earp once kept the peace in the town.

In Reno it is illegal to lie down on the sidewalk.

In Elko, Nevada everyone walking the streets is required to wear a mask.

85% of Nevada is federally owned including the secret Area 51 near the little town of Rachel.

You see the name Hughes on numerous locations and developments in Las Vegas. Howard Hughes bought up considerable Nevada property before he died in 1976, including the following hotels and casinos: Castaways, Desert Inn, Frontier, Landmark, Sands, Silver Slipper, and Harold's Club.

St Augstine Catholic Church in Austin, Nevada

St Augustine Catholic Church in Austin, Nevada

was built in 1866

Austin's oldest church, St. Augustine, requires the establishment's bells in the tower to be rung by pulling a rope located in the men's restroom.

It is illegal for any member of the legislature to conduct official business wearing a penis costume while the legislature is in session.

Nevada takes its name from a Spanish word meaning snow-capped.

Most of the state is desert but the Sierra Nevada mountain range near Reno and the Ruby Mountains near Elko have snow for half the year.

Nevada has more mountain ranges than any other state, with its highest point at the 13,145 foot top of Boundary Peak near the west-central border.

The longest running show in Las Vegas is the Follies Bergere at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino. It opened in 1959.

Misfits Flats off Highway 50 near Stagecoach takes its name from the John Huston film. Huston used the privately owned area to film a complicated wild horse round up with Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach.

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.

The state's Highway 50, known as the Loneliest Highway in America, received its name from "Life" magazine in 1986. There are few road stops in the 287 mile stretch between Ely and Fernley.

Nevada tribes include the Shoshone, Washo and Paiute. Tribal lands have been used in such film projects as "Misery," and "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

The only Nevada lake with an outlet to the sea is man made Lake Mead.

Updated October, 2007

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Great American Bars and Saloons by Kathy Weiser, Owner/Editor of Legends of America - Kathy Weiser's first venture into the publishing world takes you into the many watering holes of America's past, particularly the numerous saloons that sprouted up during our nation's Wild West days. This great photographic review displays hundreds of vintage photographs from California to Arizona, the mining camps of Colorado, all the way to New York and its turbulent days of Prohibition. Hardcover, 2006, 224 Pages. Signed by the author!!