Nevada makes up the 36th state of the USA, and a diamond in the rough at that. With its desert landscape, people could argue that the state would have limited value. However, Nevada today boasts one of the USA’s most powerful economies, drawing people and money from around the world. Learn more with these 80 Nevada facts.
- 01The state covers an estimated total area of 290,000 km².
- 02This makes the state the 7th largest in the entire USA.
- 03At 2,048 km², water makes up less than 1% of Nevada’s total area.
- 04An estimated 3.2 million people live in Nevada today.
- 05This gives the state a population density of 11 people for every km².
Nevada’s name has a history of its own.
Nevada itself forms an adjective in Spanish, meaning either snowy or snow-covered. The Spaniards first applied the adjective to the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which ironically enough mostly lies in California. A part of the range extends into Nevada, known at the time as part of Alta California.
When the USA broke what would become Nevada off from Utah in 1861, they named the new territory after the mountain range. Despite forming a word in Spanish, the name has a different pronunciation from the Spanish adjective. Similarly, Nevadans have a habit of pronouncing their state’s name differently even from fellow Americans.
Nevada has a unique geography.
Most of Northern Nevada lies in the Great Basin, a desert region that occasionally receives rains as part of the Arizona Monsoon. Similarly, winter storms sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean may also sometimes bring snow to the desert.
That said, Northern Nevada does have natural water sources, such as the Humboldt River. Other rivers also flow east down the Sierra Nevada, into the state’s north, such as the Carson, Truckee, and Walker Rivers. All these rivers drain into lakes in the state’s north, Carson Sink, Pyramid Lake, and Walker Lake, respectively.
In Central Nevada, mountains and valleys break up the land, reaching heights of up to 4 km. Finally, Southern Nevada makes up part of the Mojave Desert but still has natural water supplies in the form of the Colorado River.
Lake Mead, the largest water reservoir in the USA, lies in Nevada.
The lake stands 39 km east of Las Vegas, along the course of the Colorado River, between Nevada and Arizona. The lake isn’t natural at all, having formed in 1935, as the reservoir of the Hoover Dam.
At maximum capacity, the lake stretches 180 km long with a depth of 162 meters and contains an estimated 32.24 km³ of water. That said, the lake has never reached maximum capacity since the 1980s, thanks to the effects of drought and increasing water demands in the region. In particular, Lake Mead provides water not just to Nevada and Arizona, but also to California and even Mexico.