Nevada Trivia & Tidbits - Page 8

Looking for Nevada trivia? Try our list Nevada little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

When Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten called Battle Mountain (pop. 2,871) the "Armpit of America" in a December 2001 article, the town gracefully turned it to their advantage, organizing an annual Festival in the Pit, with Old Spice deodorant as a sponsor. Events include a deodorant toss, bed races, and beauty and talent contests.

first appeared: 11/7/2004

Founded in 1851, Dayton Cemetery, near Dayton (pop. 5,907), is one of the state’s oldest continuously maintained cemeteries and even has wagon tracks leading to the Comstock Lode mine visible in front of it. James "Old Virginny" Finney, the gold prospector for whom Virginia City was named, is buried there. He died in 1861 after a fall from a horse.

first appeared: 10/24/2004

A cottonwood tree located along U.S. Highway 50 between Fallon (pop. 7,536) and Austin has gained fame for the hundreds of shoes and boots that dangle from its branches. It’s reported that a couple began decorating the tree about 15 years ago, when—in the heat of an argument—one threw the other’s shoes into the tree.

first appeared: 10/10/2004

On Nov. 11, 1998, Jay Cochrane put on a blindfold and walked 600 feet across a tightrope, stretched 30 stories high, between the two towers of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. He earned a world skywalking record—his fifth—for the highest and longest blindfolded skywalk, which took 15 minutes to complete.

first appeared: 10/3/2004

Mormon pioneer John Orr prompted Nevada’s first gold rush when he discovered a thumb-size nugget in Gold Canyon near present-day Dayton (pop. 5,907) in June 1850. In 1969, Orr’s descendants donated the nugget—the only one ever found in the canyon—to the Nevada State Museum in Carson City (pop. 52,457), where it is now on permanent display.

first appeared: 9/19/2004

Actor Ben Alexander, who played Officer Frank Smith in the TV series Dragnet in the 1950s, was born in 1911 in Goldfield, the county seat of Esmeralda County (pop. 971). Alexander, who debuted as a child actor in 1915, also appeared in the 1930 movie All Quiet on the Western Front.

first appeared: 9/12/2004

Douglas and Lincoln counties are named for two men who were presidential campaign opponents in 1860: Douglas County was named in 1861 after Stephen A. Douglas; and Lincoln in 1866 for President Abraham Lincoln. The two men also opposed each other in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois.

first appeared: 9/5/2004

In 1960, movie producer John Huston rode to victory in the first annual camel race in Virginia City, near Carson City (pop. 52,457), while he was there filming The Misfits. The September race began as a practical joke by Bob Richards, editor of the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, but became real when several contestants entered camels.

first appeared: 8/29/2004

Tradition has it that divorcees of the last century threw their wedding rings from the Virginia Street Bridge in Reno—also known as the “Bridge of Sighs”—after receiving their final divorce decrees. The oldest functioning bridge in Reno, the Virginia Street Bridge was built in 1905 of reinforced concrete scored to resemble masonry.

first appeared: 8/22/2004

Over the last 25 years, sculptor Ron Lee has created more than 750 different figures and sold more than 2 million figurines, beginning with a clown sculpture named “Hobo Joe.” Many are on display at Ron Lee’s World of Clowns, located in a 30,000-square-foot factory in Henderson.

first appeared: 8/15/2004

The 140-acre Wild Horse State Recreation Area north of Elko (pop. 16,708) is named for the Wild Horse Reservoir that was built in 1937, covering what was once Owyhee Meadows, where wild horses roamed. The horses can still be found in the Owyhee Desert west of the reservoir, which holds irrigation water for agriculture.

first appeared: 8/8/2004

Albert Michelson (1852-1931), who spent part of his childhood in Virginia City after his parents emigrated from Prussia, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1907 for his work with light, which contributed to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. In the late 1800s, Michelson became the first to accurately measure the speed of light, and in 1920 he was the first to accurately measure a star’s diameter.

first appeared: 8/1/2004

After the state legalized gambling in 1931, the first legal gambling license in Las Vegas was issued on March 20, 1931, to Mayme Stocker, who had operated the Northern Club on Fremont Street since the 1920s. Originally from Pennsylvania, Stocker died in 1972 at the age of 97.

first appeared: 7/25/2004

It’s reported that on July 23, 1893—the same year that the state Legislature first permitted women to practice law—22-year-old Laura M. Tilden became the first woman in Nevada to pass the bar exam. Tilden was the daughter of a Virginia City attorney, and in 1894, she and her father opened a law firm in Sacramento, Calif.

first appeared: 7/18/2004

The state’s first dance reportedly took place at Hall’s Trading Post on the banks of Gold Creek on New Year’s Eve 1853, with nine women and 150 men in attendance. The settlement was officially named Dayton (pop. 5,907) in 1861.

first appeared: 7/11/2004

Sutcliffe (pop. 281) lies on the shores of Pyramid Lake–the state’s largest natural lake—which measures 30 miles long and boasts a surface area of 117,400 acres. Known as an endorheic lake—one that has no outlet to the sea or ocean—this desert lake sits entirely within the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s reservation and is home to the endangered cui-ui fish.

first appeared: 6/27/2004

Toni Tennille, Nevada’s official ambassador for the arts, lives with her husband, Daryl Dragon, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains near Lake Tahoe. The couple, better known as Captain & Tennille, moved to northern Nevada in 1984.

first appeared: 6/20/2004

Cycling champion Greg LeMond began biking in Nevada’s Washoe Valley, where he was raised. He went on to win one of the world’s toughest bicycle races, the Tour de France, three times: in 1986 and—despite being seriously injured in a 1987 shooting accident—in 1989 and 1990.

first appeared: 6/13/2004

The Amargosa River, which originates near Beatty (pop. 1,154) and runs for 125 miles along the Nevada/California border to Death Valley National Park, flows partially underground. The river’s name is Spanish for “bitter,” which is how its waters taste.

first appeared: 6/6/2004

The State Demographer’s Office reports that Nevada’s population increased to 2,296,566 from July 2002 to July 2003, an increase of 4.1 percent, making Nevada the nation’s fastest growing state.

first appeared: 5/30/2004

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