How Nevada waited a century to officially add Las Vegas

By Brett McGinness, Reno Gazette Journal 

Since 1867, Nevada’s de facto borders have been irregular polygon-ish shape we all know today — rectangular at the top; a sharp turn to the southeast, starting in the middle of Lake Tahoe and roughly tracing the Sierra Nevada; and finally, a jagged point at the bottom that traces the route of the Colorado River.

But out of indifference or procrastination, state officials didn’t button things up for more than a century.

And in 1982, three groups worked to cut off the bottom part of the state: Arizonans looking to reclaim lost territory, Northern Nevadans tired of Las Vegas’ outsized influence, and Clark County residents hoping to create an entirely new state.

Nevada’s border evolution

When Nevada gained statehood on Oct. 31, 1864, it was drastically smaller than it is today.

The focus for the state was on the mining towns on the Eastern Slope of the Sierra, including Virginia City, Carson City and other outlying communities. On the eastern side, it ended before present-day Ely; on the southern end, it didn’t include much of anything south of present-day Goldfield.

A wide swath of land was transferred from the Utah Territory in 1866, rounding out the eastern edge of the state. Then on Jan. 18, 1867, Nevada gained 12,225 square miles of land, including all of Clark County, plus the southern parts of Nye, Lincoln and Esmeralda counties. The new land gave the state access to the Colorado River. All the land gained by Nevada came at the expense of Arizona.

The only problem: State officials missed a key step.

Nevada’s constitution was flexible on the western and eastern borders of the state, partially out of the hope that it would keep being granted more and more of the Utah territory. But the constitution specifically said the northern border was at 42°N, and the southern border was at 37°N. The state’s governor, Henry G. Blasdel, told the Legislature that an official constitutional adjustment would need to be made to reflect the southern land.

That never happened. That meant that for more than a century, the southern end of Nevada wasn’t part of the state (at least on paper).

The transfer wasn’t without headaches.

In the years immediately following, the Arizona Territory fought with Congress to have the land transfer rescinded. The residents of Arizona’s former Pah-Ute and Mojave counties, despite being acquired by Nevada, continued to send representatives to the Arizona Territorial Legislature until 1869.

Federal post office listings continued to refer to the area as “Arizona Territory” well into the 1870s.

And one enterprising convict in 1968 attempted to be freed from prison because he was convicted of murder in a Clark County, Nevada court — which had no jurisdiction in the case, since the city was actually in Arizona. (He lost the appeal.)

Still, Nevada’s borders remained intact — for a while.

Fixing the oversight more than 100 years later

The outdated constitutional language didn’t become an issue until the 1970s, when Arizona state legislator Frank Kelley began half-seriously agitating for the lost land to be returned to his state. In 1978, he sponsored a resolution in the Arizona Legislature urging Congress not only to give the land back, but also to force Nevada to return all taxes “illegally” collected by the state for the previous century.

Kelley told the Tucson Citizen that the efforts to reclaim the land were “just good for a chuckle,” noting that his resolution didn’t even make it out of committee.

It took until 1980 — with another convicted murderer attempting the same “Clark County isn’t part of Nevada” defense — that the Nevada Legislature decided to clear things up. During the 1981 legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill officially accepting Southern Nevada into the fold.

After that, all the state needed was for voters to pass a ballot question the following November.

Question 5 read: “Shall the Nevada Constitution be amended to adjust the constitutional boundary of the state to the actual boundary?”

It wasn’t expected to be the least bit controversial, just a minor tweak. The Gazette Journal’s editorial board advised readers to vote yes so that “Las Vegas can become an official member of our community … if it bothers you that much.”

However, Las Vegas market analyst Carl Hunt saw an opportunity, one that might result in statehood for Southern Nevada. He pushed voters in Northern Nevada to reject the measure so they didn’t have to worry about Las Vegas’ crime and welfare issues, and could retake control over the Nevada Legislature.

Meanwhile, his message to “territorians” in Southern Nevada: riches beyond belief thanks to Las Vegas casino revenue, and reduced oversight from the federal government and the IRS.

His message did make some inroads with both groups of voters, but not nearly enough. On Election Day, slightly less than two-thirds of Nevada voters opted to include Southern Nevada in the state’s official borders.

The final tally:

• Yes: 65.8% (147,584 votes)
• No: 34.2% (76,635 votes)

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