Nevada Trivia & Tidbits - Page 9

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

During its construction, the racing surface of 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway required 42,000 tons of asphalt, equal to 17 miles of residential roadway.

first appeared: 5/23/2004

In 2003, the state recognized author Robert Laxalt with a Literary Landmark award that recognizes the achievements of deceased literary figures. Laxalt was born in 1923 and grew up in Carson City (pop. 52,457), where he was a frequent visitor to the Nevada State Library. He is best known for his stories of Nevada’s Basque culture, including the novel Sweet Promised Land.

first appeared: 5/16/2004

The bell tower rope in the 1878 St. George’s Episcopal Church in Austin was placed in the men’s room. In a previous edition, we erroneously identified the church as St. Augustine.

first appeared: 5/16/2004

Created southeast of Ely (pop. 4,041) near Baker in 1986, the 77,000-acre Great Basin National Park is Nevada’s only national park. It preserves part of the Great Basin, a geological feature that combines mountain ranges with a desert climate. With no routes to the sea, surface water collects there in shallow lakes, marshes and mud flats, and eventually evaporates.

first appeared: 5/9/2004

The 1,600-acre Las Vegas Motor Speedway was constructed in 1995 and required crews to move 4 million cubic yards of dirt, equaling 35,000 yards per day. A custom-designed lighting system at the speedway features 2,600 fixtures on 200 light poles.

first appeared: 5/9/2004

A gallon of water in Candelaria, west of Tonopah (pop. 2,627), in the 1880s cost $1—more than the cost of whiskey—because the town’s nearest water source was 9 miles away.

first appeared: 5/2/2004

NASCAR driver Kurt Busch, a Las Vegas native, recently won his third consecutive Nextel Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.

first appeared: 5/2/2004

The town of Laughlin (pop. 7,076) is named for its major investor, businessman Don Laughlin, who flew over the property, then named South Pointe, in 1964 and offered to buy it. Within two years, he had created the Riverside Resort, and today nearly 5 million people visit annually for the casinos and water sports.

first appeared: 4/25/2004

The Lost City Museum, near Lake Mead in southern Nevada, displays artifacts from an Anasazi Indian village whose people mysteriously disappeared about 800 years ago. The museum, established in 1935, preserves artifacts from the ancient site that eventually was inundated by the waters of Lake Mead after Hoover Dam was completed in 1936.

first appeared: 4/18/2004

Goldfield (pop. 600), the largest city in the state with nearly 20,000 people in the early 1900s, was once the home of the Goldfield Hotel. Its accommodations were said to be the most luxurious between Kansas City and San Francisco.

first appeared: 4/11/2004

The 300-passenger paddlewheel boat Desert Princess plies the waters of Lake Mead on daily excursions offering scenic views of the largest man-made lake in the Western Hemisphere.

first appeared: 4/4/2004

The Silver State lays claim to being the fastest-growing state for the last 17 years. Nevada gained an estimated 90,544 new residents in 2003, a growth rate of 4.1 percent, increasing its population to 2.3 million.

first appeared: 3/28/2004

The longest-running show in Las Vegas history is Folies Bergere, which opened in 1959 at the Tropicana Hotel and continues to please audiences.

first appeared: 3/21/2004

The three-acre Southern Nevada Zoo and Botanical Park outside Las Vegas is the only zoo in the state open year-round. It houses a variety of endangered cats, as well as the last family of Barbary apes in the United States. It also displays every species of venomous reptile native to southern Nevada.

first appeared: 3/14/2004

Noted news broadcaster Lowell Thomas once called Elko (pop. 14,736) the last cowtown in America. It is the home of the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and gold has made it something of a boom city since the 1980s.

first appeared: 3/7/2004

James E. Casey, who was born in Candelaria, Nev., borrowed $100 and helped found a messenger service in Seattle, Wash., in 1907. Eventually the company grew to become United Parcel Service (UPS).

first appeared: 3/7/2004

St. Augustine, the oldest church in Austin, has a bell in the steeple that can only be rung by pulling on a rope located in the men’s restroom.

first appeared: 2/29/2004

In the late 1800s, Nevada experienced a 20-year economic depression and population decline that left some wondering if statehood might be revoked. A state was supposed to have 60,000 residents, and Nevada only had about 40,000 in 1900. That same year, silver was discovered in Tonopah, and things began to turn around. Today, its population is nearly 2 million.

first appeared: 2/22/2004

The West’s last stagecoach robbery occurred on Dec. 5, 1916, in Jarbidge Canyon in northern Elko County (pop. 45,291).

first appeared: 2/15/2004

Commonly mispronounced place names in the state include the towns of Genoa (Juh-NO-ah), Denio (Deh-NIGH-oh), and Owyhee (Oh-WHY-hee; a town and river named after Hawaii). The Toiyabe (Toy-AH-bee) mountain range and national forest also is a common victim.

first appeared: 2/15/2004

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