CHAPTER II 



Social Life in Nevada The Landscape not Without Compensating Charm Public Schools State 

 Institutions Political Government The People 



In the preceding chapter is presented a general survey of the agricultural outlook in 

 Nevada. Let us now briefly consider the physical, social and political characteristics of 

 the State as a place of residence. 



As before stated, the car windows of the overland trains as the vantage point of 

 observation give anything but a true impression of Nevada. None of these three 

 railroads passes within observation distance of other than a few isolated tracks of 

 cultivated land, and these seemingly transplanted oases, foreign to their environment 

 serve only to accentuate in the mind of the traveler the sense of overwhelming immensity 

 and desolation. He sees nothing that is agricultural in the sense to which he is accus- 

 tomed, and gathers his impressions of the social life of the people from the unprepossessing 

 visible portions of the stations and towns along the way. What the traveler thus carries 

 away with him lacks very much of being an adequate or true picture of Nevada, agri- 

 culturally, socially or otherwise. 



Within a little distance of the railroad at Lovelock, for example, is one of the most 

 productive farm sections in America, yet the traveler in the Pullman car does not observe 

 it. Only the natural grass lowlands of the Truckee Valley, at Reno, may be seen from 

 the overland train, the remainder of this highly cultivated valley, as well as the chain 

 of rich farm valleys leading south for a hundred miles, are only visible from branch 

 lines. And this is characteristic of the State. To see agricultural Nevada one must go 

 where the cultivated sections are. 



The Charm of the Nevada Landscape. 



One who has lived for any length of time in sight of the ocean or of lofty moun- 

 tains will ever afterwards find something wanting in a landscape without the one or the 

 other. It is the lure of their immensity and grandeur which he misses, and the alternating 

 moods which the face of Nature presents with every hour of the day and night. The 

 morning breaks with a glory unknown to the level plains; the sun in setting paints the 

 most wonderful of oriflammes in the sky. Peaks, crags and mountain crests an ever-chang- 

 mg panorama, a perpetually unfolding mystery! And men and women grow quickly to 

 love the influence of these far stretches of desert, bounded by the hills, wherein is the 

 charm of absolute freedom and the spell of eternal peace. 



The traveler who has gained his impressions of Nevada from a Pullman car, and 

 who has, moreover, never lived close enough to Nature to experience what is here stated, 

 marvels that any one would choose Nevada as a place of abode. Yet thousands of very 

 highly cultivated men and women reside from choice in this State. Indeed, the ratio of 

 educated and refined people is fully equal to that of other states. Nevada possesses, 

 proportionally to population, an exceptionally large number of resident graduates of 

 American and European colleges and universities. This is attributable to the very con- 

 ditions under which the State has been forced to make its progress. Mining and reclama- 

 tion enterprises have each demanded the highest technical skill and training. Mining 

 camps, also, have been a sort of magnet to attract not only the graduates of law and 

 medical schools as favorable openings for getting a professional start, but have likewise 

 lured young college men of varied attainments who sought fortune where opportunity 

 seemed greatest. It is also characteristic of the Western pioneer that as he prospered he 

 determined to give his sons and daughters the best education possible. Thus an unusually 

 high percentage of the present generation of native Nevadans are college men and women. 



Public School System. 



The founders of the State in adopting a constitution provided that all moneys derived 

 from the sale of public lands granted the State by the National Government should be 



21 



