Relocating to Nevada?

Enjoy your adventure as you visit the best Nevada relocation resource available today.

Before you start your journey, take a minute and review what makes Nevada a great place to work and play.

What makes Nevada real estate worthwhile?

Although high plateaus, flat valleys, and alkaline deserts all help to forge the landscape of Nevada, it is the 150-plus mountain ranges traversing the state that figure most prominently in its rough topography. Among the most prominent peaks are those of the Snake Range in the east, the Ruby Mountains in the northeast, the Toiyabe and Shoshone ranges tucked in the state’s center, and the dramatic Sierra Nevada in the west. The state’s name is taken from the Sierra Nevada, which means “snow-covered mountain range” in Spanish. Most of the rivers in Nevada are small and drain internally into either lakes or flat, shallow patches of land known as sinks, which dry up under the intense heat of summer. Lake Mead, one of the world’s largest artificial lakes, was formed by the immense Hoover Dam and is the only Nevada lake that empties into the ocean.

The federal government acquired what is now Nevada in 1848, when it was included in territory ceded by Mexico at the end of the Mexican War. Prior to that time, Native Americans had lived in the region for at least 10,000 years. Many of these early residents were cave dwellers who left picture writings on rocks in the Valley of Fire, in the southern part of the state. The modern Shoshone and Paiutes, the cultural descendants of the early peoples, made a good living from what appears to be an empty land, hunting and gathering, manufacturing intricate basketry and ingeniously constructed fur clothing, and using hundreds of local plants as medicines.

The first Europeans to explore the area—mostly fur traders during the early 1800s—encountered communities of Mohave, Paiute, Shoshone, and Washoe. In 1859 the discovery of a rich deposit of silver ore called the Comstock Lode brought a massive influx of fortune seekers, prompting the creation of the Nevada Territory two years later.

President Lincoln, in need of both Nevada’s silver and its citizens’ support for the Union cause in the Civil War, encouraged the fledgling territory to petition for statehood. Even though it lacked the number of residents required by law for admittance to the Union, Nevada became the 36th U.S. state in 1864, thereby acquiring one of its nicknames, the Battle Born State. In the decades that followed, the state’s fortunes rose and fell according to the cyclical demand for its mining and livestock industries. But by the 1930s the combination of legalized gambling and the construction of Boulder Dam, later renamed Hoover Dam, had established a solid foundation for Nevada’s economic growth and stability.

Although it is still one of the nation’s least densely populated states, Nevada more than doubled in size during the 1980s, and its growth rate was the highest in the United States. From 1990 to 1994 Las Vegas grew more rapidly than any other metropolitan area in the country, while nearby Henderson was the nation’s fastest-growing city. More than 80 percent of Nevadans reside in urban areas, primarily in and around the state’s two largest cities, Las Vegas and Reno.

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