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© 2004 Scott Sady, Reno Gazette-Journal Introduction Essay for Nevada 24/7 The Nevada Road By John L. Smith Bust out of the neon-juiced hyperbole of Las Vegas, and Nevada stretches beyond the blazing horizon into a scarlet sunset. Snakes and coyotes flash in the mind's eye as the car heads north with only the headlights to tell the road ahead. Suddenly, the senses get that tequila tingle. As the roaring desert silence and sage-scented air wash over, the question rises: Which is the real Nevada? The audacious excess of Las Vegas, or the equally surreal big empty of the open road? The answer is both. Of Nevada's 2.2 million people, 1.7 million of them crowd into the Las Vegas Valley, and most of the rest cluster in Reno. That leaves much of the Great Basin desolate--most of it burdened with sad, tiny tales of boom and bust. Ghost towns pepper the wide, wide valleys and mountain washes, sporting names like Aurora and Manhattan. Bone-dry piles of tumbled planks and faint lines of old roads through the sagebrush tell of a prosperity that played out with the claims. In towns like Eureka, Ely, and Elko, the economic pulse still rises and falls with the price of gold. The bigger story of the Silver State is its lawful libertinism. We only won our statehood (1864) because of the Union's need for Comstock silver. Then, when we let gambling in in 1931, newspapers across the nation demanded that our statehood be revoked. We were scorned for our quickie divorces and then for our legalized brothels. We bore the nation's moralizing--right up until Las Vegas became the all-American Carnaval. Incidentally, 48 states have embraced some form of legalized gambling. Meanwhile, we haven't lost our defiant streak. With 86 percent of the state under federal supervision, there are deep veins of antigovernment sentiment, especially in the northern cow counties, where ranchers and miners battle to keep open their arid range and their wilderness roads. The feds plan to bury the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Opposition to becoming the nation's ultimate dump has been a unifying force in this politically divided state. The state's low-tax landscape and libertarian political ethic have created an inviting stage for dreamers and grifters, entrepreneurs and immigrants. This is the place where America's gambling bosses once sought sanctuary from the government, only to have corporate titans move in and make them look like rubes. Imagine that a place that nourished the Paiute mystic Wovoka and gave meaning to Wayne Newton, and you begin to get the full, stereoscopic picture. The long, strange Nevada road trip cruises from the gaudiest street in the world all the way to Highway 50, the Loneliest Road in America. Out the window are more than 200 mountain ranges, heaving up like waves in a desert sea. Off on a distant mountain top, the Earth's oldest trees have seen it all. On a ridge up ahead, herds of wild horses. Browse    View All    The Nevada Road    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    Nevada at Play    Our Town Photos: 120 Photographers: 31 Towns: 39

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