When you think of the far West before statehood, you tend to equate justice with “hemp justice,” Judge Lynch; vigilante stringing up outlaws on the nearest tree. But this was not the case when wild and wooly Nevada was born out of a single tiny community. Before it became a Territory of the U.S. (and before it ended up, alas, as a sort of “mineral plantation” of San Francisco bankers), it was the westernmost section of the Mormons’ 1849 State of Deseret, and it was almost unoccupied

True West January/February 2025