While Nevada’s neighbor California is home to a wide variety of terrains, Nevada is mostly desert. It’s mostly known for the very popular and one of a kind adult entertainment center Las Vegas. Nevada was named after the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and “sierra” means saw while “nevada” means snow covered. Despite the name suggesting that the place is snow covered, it’s actually the driest state in the country.

Nevada is one of two of the states that actually became larger when it joined the union. Nevada actually got some land from the Utah Territory in 1866 as an act that was supposed to punish the state for its Mormonism, and then it also got some land from the Arizona Territory in 1867 which was also a punishment, for the suspicion that Arizona was aligning to the Confederacy.

The capital of Nevada is Carson City,  which is one of only two two capitals in the United States that actually border another city.

The city of Las Vegas eats more shrimp each day than everywhere else in the country combined. This number is an unbelievable 60,000 pounds per day. Over 40 million people visit Las Vegas each year, and most of them come to party and/or gamble. The city of Las Vegas also has more hotel rooms than any other city in the world.

The silver ore called the Comstock Load in Mount Davidson had a mining rush that was the next biggest one after the California gold rush. There are about 100 miles of underground shafts and tunnels in the load.

Lake Tahoe is the third deepest lake in the U.S. It technically has shores in both California and Nevada.

Even though Nevada is pretty big on gambling, it is one of seven states that does not have its own lottery.

Nevada has 23 different designated wilderness areas, 2,000 miles of streams, and 44,000 acres of man made reservoirs.

Virginia City Nevada is considered by many to be the most haunted town in the whole country. It’s a mining town in the Comstock Load.

In the year 1910 Nevada was the only town that allowed boxing.

Most of the land in Nevada is owned by the federal government, about 87 percent of it.

The hard hat was created in Nevada for the construction workers who were working to build the Hoover Dam.

A huge part of Nevada has been used for nuclear testing, which is allowed since the government owns so much of the land. The Nevada Test Site is only 65 miles north of Las Vegas and between the years of 1951 to 1992 there were 928 different nuclear tests carried out there. It is the spot in the U.S. with the highest concentration of nuclear weapons to ever be detonated.

Nevada is nicknamed the “silver state”, but it is actually the biggest gold producing state in the country, as well as the fourth largest producer of gold in the entire world.