What is Nevada?

That’s the question that came to my mind after reading Kevin D. Williamson’s What is Texas? a few weeks ago, which analyzed the mythology Texans create for themselves, the mythology we create for Texans, and how the two intertwine and define Texan life. 

Texas, you must understand, is big — with apologies to Douglas Adams, you just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the highway to Elko, but that's peanuts to Texas. The 300 mile drive from Reno to Elko would get you a little more than halfway between El Paso and San Antonio. The 400 mile drive from Reno to Best Wendover (you’re welcome, Mayor Corona) gets you from El Paso to Abilene — if you’re a bird. The 460 mile drive from Las Vegas to Elko (State Highway 229 near the Ruby Mountains is a pretty drive that every Nevadan should take at least once, but don’t let Google Maps fool you into thinking it’s a shortcut this time of year) will actually get you from El Paso to Abilene if you’re in your car. Then, from Abilene, there’s another 360 miles of highway to get through before you get to Texarkana on the other side of the state — which makes Texas a roughly 820 mile drive, widthwise. 

To put that into perspective for those of us who migrated here from California (boy, there sure are a lot of us in Nevada, aren’t there?) that’s the same distance as a drive from San Diego to Crescent City. Alternatively, it's a slightly longer drive than taking the 5 from Medford, Oregon back to San Diego. Remember, however, that unlike California, Texas isn’t just a skinny one-dimensional geography. El Paso to Texarkana gets you west-to-east, but there’s north-to-south to consider, too. In that direction, there are more than 770 miles of highway separating Brownsville and Amarillo — and another 100 miles of Texas before you reach the Oklahoma border.

Like I said, Texas is really, really big. 

That’s why assuming everyone in a state that size is some sort of coal rolling, diesel truck driving, gun-toting, flag-waving cowboy oil driller may be a useful stereotype to the sort of Texan who wishes the state were that simple, or the sort of non-Texan who wants a mythological polity to lionize, but it’s demonstrably inaccurate. Similarly, assuming every Nevadan is some sort of heavy drinking, cocktail waitressing card shark might be nice if you own a casino and dream of an unlimited, captive labor force of service workers educated solely in the ways of pleasuring tourists for profit — but it drastically reduces the very real complexity of our state, and not to our benefit.

Even so, like Texas, we are self-consciously proud of our state, and like Texans, we sometimes like to play up to our reputation. Like Texas, Nevada is bigger than people think, and our size embraces a wider diversity of people, of cultures, and of ways of life than even we sometimes remember to realize.

For starters, Nevada is incredibly ethnically diverse and is getting more diverse by the year. According to the most recent census, we’re now the third-most diverse state, behind only Hawaii and California. Additionally, we’re on the cusp of becoming a majority-minority state — or, at least, a state whose population is decreasingly likely to self-identify as “white,” with everything that entails, for whatever reason. Either way, Nevada’s shifting demographics promise to produce dramatic shifts in political representation, though whether those shifts produce dramatic shifts in political outcomes remains to be seen.

Nevada being diverse, and having that diversity reflected in our politics, isn’t unusual. Of our first 10 governors, three of them — Frank Bell, John Edward Jones and Reinhold Sadler — weren’t born in this country (Bell was born in Canada, Jones in Wales, and Sadler was a German immigrant born in what is now part of modern-day Poland). To put that number into perspective, only two of California’s 40 governors were immigrants — John G. Downey and Arnold Schwarzenegger — and the closest thing to a foreign-born governor Texas has ever had was Oscar Branch Colquitt, who was born in Georgia while it was briefly part of the Confederacy.

That diversity doesn’t just extend to ethnicity or skin color, though. Yes, Nevada is the state which produced what, at the time, felt like an overwhelming victory for Bernie Sanders, and our state is one whose official state Democratic Party organization is run as an unofficial Democratic Socialist chapter. But Nevada is also the state which produced conservative-led Shovel Brigades and Sagebrush Rebellions, including the latest one in Bunkerville. It’s a state in which aspiring statewide political candidates attend conspiracy theory conferences. It’s also the state which produced perennial Twitter main character and cancer-causing fungus proponent Michele Fiore, who finally (if selfishly and inadvertently) performed an actual public service for Nevadans by killing Joey Gilbert’s gubernatorial campaign — unfortunately, she did so by starting her own.

But, lest you think Nevada’s political diversity only exists in its extremes, Nevada is also home to a Democratic governor and the Republican governor he succeeded, and they both thought highly enough of each other to spend some of the Nevada Day parade together yesterday (it doesn’t hurt that our previous governor is now the current president of Nevada’s flagship research university). Nevada is also home to a large and growing nonpartisan voting population, including Reno’s Mayor Hillary Schieve and yours truly, who now make up a plurality of all voters in the state.

Nevada’s diversity doesn’t begin or end with its politics, either. It’s easy to assume when driving through Nevada that our geography is blessed solely with a monochromatic diversity of browns, beiges and grays — but it’s also blessed with more named mountain ranges than perhaps any other state, each one a comparatively moist biome supporting some of the most unique life in the country. Nevada supports 40 listed endangered species, including the desert tortoise, the Mount Charleston blue butterfly, and several species native solely to Ash Meadows, as well as formerly endangered species like the Lahontan cutthroat. We also have more than two dozen state parks, as well as Great Basin National Park, one of the quietest and least visited national parks in the country. Then there’s the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, which was, at one point, the McFurthest spot in the lower 48 — until the McDonald’s in Tonopah closed, which created a new McFurthest spot south of Warm Springs.

Nevada is even hydrologically diverse. Yes, most of Nevada is contained within the Great Basin, a vast geography which drains into itself instead of the ocean — but not all of it. Most of Clark County, of course, drains into the Colorado River, but significant portions of northeast Nevada drain into the Owyhee and Bruneau rivers, which, in turn, drain into Snake River — and that, in turn, drains into the Columbia River watershed. The next time you visit Portland and have a drink, consider that perhaps a drop or two of water in that glass may have made its way there from a mountain stream in this very state.

It’s also undeniably true that much of Nevada’s diversity requires a bit of effort to actually experience. It’s easy to drive to one of Nevada’s bordertown gaming outposts, like Primm, Jackpot, Laughlin, South Lake Tahoe or West Wendover, and drive no further. It’s easy to fly into either Reno or Clark County (the airport formerly known as McCarran isn’t actually in Las Vegas, not that it goes out of the way to advertise that fact), visit one of our hotel-casino arcologies, and then go back home. It’s easy to look at the browns and beiges as you drive through and think nothing of them — they certainly don’t bring attention to themselves nor demand further investigation the way southern Utah’s vibrant red hills do. 

Nevada is, above all else, quite satisfied to reward its visitors and residents, no matter how incurious they might be. Nevada, more than anything, seeks to prove Socrates wrong — whether the unexamined life is worth living or not, that's no excuse to not have a little fun.

But if you are curious, if you’re willing to go outside, if you’re willing to touch grass and examine and explore, Nevada is quite satisfied to reward you, too. All you need to do is ask — but you do need to ask. It is not Nevada’s job to educate you (not that we could if we wanted to).

Nevada is, in short, a little lazy. Nevada is a state which created its own holiday, then moved it around so we could more reliably enjoy a three-day weekend. Nevada believes if it’s worth getting rich, it’s best to get rich quick. Nevada is a place where good enough probably is, we hope. Nevada is a place which gets the job done, but only after exhausting all of the alternatives.

Nevada is, in other words, America writ small — but not too small. Remember, Nevada is bigger than you think.

Happy Nevada Day.

David Colborne was active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he blogged intermittently on his personal blog, ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate, and served on the executive committee for his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is now an IT manager, a registered non-partisan voter, and the father of two sons. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].