User:Snyderethan/Nevada Territory

The current state of Nevada was originally created from the territories of Utah and New Mexico, with a large sum coming from the Utah side, with the New Mexico and Utah territories being created in 1850. Nevada was finally added into the Union as the 36th state in 1864, though it severely lacked the minimum requirement of a population count of 60,000 citizens. Originally much smaller than it was today, the initial border expanded east and south, encompassing an additional amount of land roughly 1/3 of the original size while including important ad-dons such as Hoover Dam.

The original section of land was conquered from the Spanish during the Mexican War, which also led to the development of many other states such as Texas, Arizona, and California. With the frenzy that occurred in the California Gold Rush, many miners and settlers traveled across the country in 1848 through the state of Nevada to reach California, developing many trading outposts and Nevada's oldest town known today as Genoa. Eventually, the Gold Rush ended, leaving miners desperate to find new discoveries, and in 1859, the first discovery of silver ore was unearthed in Virginia City, leading to an influx of miners from California migrating to Nevada. There was so much ore that over a span of two years that approximately 72 million dollars worth of silver ore was unearthed.

With the birth of the Civil War in 1861 at Fort Sumter, things were getting heated on both sides, and the current president of the Union, Abraham Lincoln, decided forth the movement to annex more states into the Union to stop slavery and unite the country. As turmoil and bloodshed spread, president Lincoln used this moment to annex Nevada into the United States claiming its land would only benefit the Unions cause, not the Confederates, and ensured that it had riches that could be used to sustain the wealth of the North. While the original creation of the Utah territory occurred in 1850, Nevada's annexation happened much earlier than Utah's by more than 30 years. As the original size of Nevada was not all that significant as it is now, its growth is responsible from the leeching of the Utah territory, and in 1866 acquired a chunk of this territory onto its borders. In 1867, Nevada took the Southern tidbit from the New Mexico territory and expanded into the modern shape as of this date. With the addition of land from the bordering states, Nevada has grown 47,357 square miles larger since its initial size from two different states. Nevada is currently in second place trailing close behind to Missouri for states being altered after their original annexation.

Nevada became a territory with an accompanying nine original counties as of 1861. When the state of Nevada entered into the Union, the altering of counties totaled the new amount to 11. Within the last 100 years, numerous changes were made, including the disappearance of Ormsby county and the newly formed Carson City county filling in its place. The last of the alterations, being this last inclusion, now confirms as of 1969 that the state of Nevada contains 16 counties.