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Nevada Counties

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Nevada Counties

There aresixteen Counties and one independent city in the state of Nevada. On November 25, 1861, the first Nevada Territorial Legislature established nine counties. Nevada was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864 with eleven counties. In 1969, Ormsby County and Carson City were consolidated into a single municipal government known as Carson City.

Nye County, Nevada

Nye County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Tonopah
Year Organized: 1864
Square Miles: 18,147

Court House:

250 North Highway

160 Ste., 9
Pahrump, NV 89060-0000

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for the Territorial Gov. and United States Senator, (Nevada), JJames Warren Nye (June 10, 1815 – December 25, 1876) was a United States Senator from Nevada. Born in DeRuyter, New York, he attended the common schools and Homer Academy in Homer, New York; he studied law in Troy, New York, was admitted to the bar, and practiced in Madison County.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

February 16, 1864 - Named for the Territorial Gov. and United States Senator, (Nevada), James W. Nye. Nye County is the second largest county in the US (San Bernadino County in California being first. Thank you Herb) covering 18,294 square miles. Seat: Tonapah (1905), from the Indian language "Tono" meaning thorny and "pah" which means water. It is said that a local Indian gave it the name meaning a thorny bush hiding a spring.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 18,159 square miles (47,031 km²). 18,147 square miles (47,000 km²) of it is land and 12 square miles (31 km²) of it (0.07%) is water.

Nye County is located in south central Nevada, and, given its nuclear history, some find it interesting that its shape can be seen as a skewed mushroom cloud. Nye is the largest county in Nevada and is the third largest county in the continental United States, after San Bernardino County in California and Coconino County in Arizona. With a land area of 11,560,960 acres (46,786 km²), Nye County is larger than the combined total area of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware. Of this vast land area, only 822,711 acres (3,329 km²), or just over seven percent of the total, is private land; the majority of the county's land is owned by the federal government. According to the United States Census Bureau the county's Census Tract 9805, with a land area of 4,225.415 square miles (10,943.7745 km²), comprising the Nevada Test Site and Nye County's portion of the Nevada Test and Training Range, is the largest census tract in the United States that has absolutely no resident population (as of the 2000 census).

Neighboring Counties:

Churchill County, Nevada - northwest
Lander County, Nevada - north
Eureka County, Nevada - north
White Pine County, Nevada - northeast
Lincoln County, Nevada - east
Clark County, Nevada - east
Esmeralda County, Nevada - west
Mineral County, Nevada - west
Inyo County, California - south

Cities and Towns:

- Tonopah (County Seat)

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."