The accumulated water from Hoover Dam forced the evacuation of several communities, most notably St. Thomas, Nevada, whose last resident fled the town in 1938. The ruins of St. Thomas are sometimes visible when the water level in Lake Mead drops below normal.

Nevada designated sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) as the official state flower in 1917. Native Americans used the leaves of sagebrush for medicine and sagebrush bark for weaving mats.

Carson City is named after American frontiersman Kit Carson. The town began as a stopover for California-bound emigrants, but developed into a city with the Comstock Lode, a silver strike in the mountains to the northeast. It has served as Nevada's capital since statehood in 1864.

To this day, Hoover Dam is the largest single public works project in U.S. history. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and contains over 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete. More than 22,000 people worked on the dam, and there were 112 deaths associated with its construction, starting with surveyor J.G. Tierney who drowned on December 20, 1922 in a flash flood, while looking for an ideal spot for the dam.

Native to the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of the southwestern United States, the desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) is the largest reptile in the southwest and can live more than 80 years.

At 13,140 feet Boundary Peak is the highest point in Nevada, just slightly above Wheeler Peak in Great Basin National Park. Boundary is located in a remote part of Esmeralda County, the least populated county in Nevada, near the border with California at the north end of the White Mountains.

Nevada was the first state to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting the federal and state government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

In 1931 the Pair-O-Dice Club was the first casino to open on Highway 91, the future Las Vegas Strip. Later renamed the New Frontier, the resort had the distinction of hosting Elvis Presley's first Vegas appearance in 1956, and the final performance of the Supremes with Diana Ross as lead singer on January 14, 1970.

Local businessmen first promoted Reno as "The Biggest Little City on the Map" in the summer of 1910, when the heavyweight prizefighting championship between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries brought thousands of spectators to town. They were greeted with promotional cards featuring the slogan superimposed over a map of the world.

Nevada's 125 °F (52 °C) reading at Laughlin on June 29, 1994, is the third highest statewide record high temperature of a U.S. state, just behind Arizona's 128 °F (53 °C) reading and California's 134 °F (57 °C) reading.