Online Nevada Encyclopedia

History of Nevada Diversity

Stephen Shu-Ning Liu

Few writers have come so far to wedge their voice into American poetry. Stephen Liu was born in 1930 in Fuling, China, near the Yangtze River—a town that is now underwater. Not long ago, Liu's daughter April filmed the small community before it was flooded and superimposed her father's poetry on the film, Requiem for a River.

St. Mary in the Mountains Catholic Church

Father Hugh Gallagher built Virginia City's first Catholic church shortly after his arrival in 1860, but a strong wind blew the humble building down within two years. Father Patrick Manogue built its successor, known as St. Mary in the Mountains Church, shortly after he arrived on the Comstock in 1862. Bishop Eugene O'Connell dedicated the simple structure on July 17, 1864, a block south of where the current structure stands.

SS Rex Club

Tony Cornero, a one-time 1920s bootlegger from California and a former casino operator well known in Las Vegas, opened the S.S. Rex Club casino at Second and Fremont streets in downtown Las Vegas in 1944. Cornero, born in Italy in 1895, named the club after an ill-fated gambling ship he owned off the coast of Southern California, six years before.

Spanish Speaking Settlers: Nineteenth-Century

The first speakers of Spanish in the western Great Basin came from Mexico and California as well as South and Central America. Like others, they exploited the early Comstock and its vast economic opportunities. In 1860, before the creation of Nevada Territory, the federal census documented a Spanish-speaking population in the area. It possessed two characteristics worthy of comment.

Sheldon Adelson

Sheldon Adelson (1933 - ), the at times controversial billionaire casino developer who made and lost fortunes in the 1960s, rode the tide of the personal computer revolution in the 1980s and 1990s with his computer trade show, and used the revenue to build The Venetian and The Palazzo on the Strip.

Scots: Immigrants from Scotland

Scots arrived in Nevada at the beginning of historic settlement. These immigrants, together with fellow Celts, (the Cornish, Irish, Welsh, and Manx), played important roles in the region's development. Although Scots were one of the larger groups to settle North America, the Irish and Cornish eclipsed them in Nevada.

School Segregation in Nineteenth-Century Nevada

One of the most contentious issues for authors of the Nevada State Constitution involved the education of racial minorities. In these debates, lawmakers grappled with the problem of a multi-racial population in a post-slavery society. Initially, they decided not to include minorities, principally African Americans and Chinese, in a universal compulsory education system. A Nevada Supreme Court decision in 1872, however, ended this exclusion and opened Nevada's public education system to racial minorities.

Sarann Knight Preddy, Entrepreneur

Sarann Knight Preddy provides a unique perspective on women and gaming, as the first Black woman to receive a Nevada gaming license.

Sarah Winnemucca's Life Among the Piutes

In 1883 Sarah Winnemucca sat writing at a rapid pace in the Boston home of her friend and supporter, the New England reformer Elizabeth Peabody. The book in progress would not be Sarah's first publication. A letter she wrote in 1870 to inform the Nevada Superintendent of Indian Affairs about the condition of her tribe, the Paiutes, in northwestern Nevada, was subsequently reprinted in several newspapers, in Harper's magazine, and in A Century of Dishonor, Helen Hunt Jackson's 1881 polemic.

Sarah Winnemucca

Sarah Winnemucca (1844-91) was one of the most influential and charismatic American Indian women in American history. Born near the Humboldt River Sink to a legendary family of Paiute leaders, at a time when the Paiutes' homeland and way of life were increasingly threatened by the influx of white settlers, Winnemucca dedicated much of her life to working for her people.

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