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A Computer-Enhanced Map of Nevada Geography Is Nevada’s geography a blessing or a curse? For twenty-first-century Nevadans, it is a benefit, without question. The sunny and temperate climate has attracted vacationers , retirees, and others for the last half century. The warm winters in Las Vegas are central to its status as a resort area, and the snowy Sierra Nevada in the winter attracts skiers from around the world. Beautiful Lake Tahoe provides year-round recreation for Nevadans and visitors. However, for nineteenth-century explorers, emigrants, and settlers this positive view of Nevada’s geography would have been incomprehensible . The mountains that provide such beauty and recreation today were extraordinary obstacles before railroads and automobiles. The north/south orientation of Nevada ’s mountain ranges made the journey from the Great Salt Lake to California extraordinarily difficult, and the fact that Nevada’s rivers do not drain to the sea prevented water travel as an alternative. The enhanced topographical image included here provides a perspective on Nevada’s geography that was unimaginable to early emigrants to the state. If they had seen this image, would they have made the trip? —John B. Reid Mark Twain on Nevada’s “Harsh Land” Who would stay in such a region one moment longer than he must? I thought I had seen barrenness before . . . but I was green. . . . Here, on the Humboldt, famine sits enthroned, and waves his scepter over a dominion expressly made for him. . . . There can never be any considerable settlement here. These are strange words indeed for Horace Greeley (1811–72), the famous nineteenthcentury journalist who made “Go West, young man” a national slogan. While he encouraged those seeking opportunity to turn their eyes to an undeveloped frontier, he saw little to recommend the Great Basin to settlers. The same was true for many The Physical Environment 1 3 4 | u n c o v e r i n g n e v a d a ’ s p a s t others who headed to the Pacific Coast in search of cheap land, easy gains, and a temperate climate. When young Samuel Clemens came west in 1861 with his brother Orion, newly appointed as secretary-treasurer for the Nevada Territory, he found the region shocking in its severity. The following is an excerpt from Roughing It (1871), his account of his Nevada sojourn. —Ronald M. James My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory—an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer , Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor’s absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of “Mr. Secretary ,” gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor, but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going to make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to travel! I never had been away from home, and that word “travel” had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and maybe get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver mines, and maybe go about on an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and the ocean and “the isthmus” as if it was nothing of any consequence to have seen those marvels face to face. What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, when he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime position of private secretary under him, it appeared to me that the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament was rolled together as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire . My contentment was complete. At the end of an hour or two...

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