Nevada's Misfit Child

If one were to liken the cities and towns of Nevada to children in a family, Las Vegas most definitely would be Nevada’s problem child.

While Nevada’s cities generally are proper, practical and benevolent, Las Vegas is vulgar, flamboyant and self-centered. While Nevada’s cities generally are sincere, sensitive and friendly, Las Vegas is artificial, crass and pitiless. In short, Las Vegas is the kid brother who outgrew his family’s frontier values and roots as well as his britches.

One has only to be the right mixture of historian and psychologist, however, to understand how this bitter misfortune befell our otherwise upstanding family. Simply put, Las Vegas doesn’t fit in because its past is rooted not in Nevada but in Arizona.

When Nevada was admitted to the Union in 1864 its southern boundary was not set as it is today. The southern portion of what is now Nye County and all of what is now Clark County were part of the Arizona Territory.

In 1866 Congress generously offered to Nevada an unsightly horn-shaped expanse of rock and sand that was protruding awkwardly from Arizona’s northwest corner. The territory was optimistically calling this unproductive and revolting tract of unsettled dust Mojave County. As there was no comparable horn poking out of the other side of Arizona, it is supposed Congress thought the uncouth young territory needed some judicious trimming.

In 1867 Nevada’s legislature, at the urging of Governor Blasdel, said yes to Congress’ kind invitation. The jagged and appalling bump was then severed from Arizona, over anguished shrieks of protest, and grafted onto Nevada’s posterior. Congress, ever in search of balance and symmetry, was now well satisfied. Arizona, on the other hand, felt betrayed, and grew sullen and moody.

In the early 1900s a railroad was constructed across the furthermost reaches of southern Nevada. Out of that promiscuous and frenzied merger of steel rails and former Arizona dirt Las Vegas was born. Eventually the homely and precocious village grew into a city, and because its parentage was murky and dubious, it developed mental problems and went through an identity crisis. In order to prove it was Nevada’s most sophisticated and successful city, it has for many years been over-compensating and behaving like a fool.

One, of course, does not like to speak unkindly of a family member, but there in a nutshell you have it, the gruesome tale of how Arizona Territory lost a hideous antler and how Las Vegas, Nevada’s misfit child, was born out of it.

Unfortunately the story does not end there. Now our malignant sibling to the south wants to greedily siphon water from other areas of the state to continue its excessive and wanton lifestyle. And it is making frightening progress.

So what can we do? What steps can decent Nevadans take to stop this unrestrained fiend, this malevolent monster we once called a brother?

There remains to us one tempting solution, a long shot, to be sure, but one that must be seriously considered by all respectable Nevadans.

If the citizens of Arizona are willing to take it back, we could return to them that now festering, ghastly bulge they formerly and proudly were calling Mojave County.