Reno, Nevada

When Mella Rothwell Harmon wrote her thesis for the University of Nevada in Reno in 1998, she tackled Reno’s divorce trade at dude ranches during the Great Depression. “Nevada’s 20th-century cowboys got to wrangle women instead of cows,” she jokes. Yet long before these divorce seekers came to Reno (current population 217,091), the city attracted emigrants traveling the California and Pony Express Trails. In fact, the Donner Party lingered too long in the Truckee Meadows of present-da