Reno, Nevada
Reno is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada–California border. It is the county seat and most populous city of Washoe County. Sitting in the High Eastern Sierra foothills, in the Truckee River valley, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, it is about northeast of Lake Tahoe. Reno is the 78th most populous city in the United States, the third most populous city in Nevada, and the most populous in Nevada outside the Las Vegas Valley. It is known as "The Biggest Little City in the World" and had a population of 264,165 at the 2020 census.
The city is named after Civil War Union major general Jesse L. Reno, who was killed in action during the American Civil War at the Battle of South Mountain, on Fox's Gap.
The Reno–Sparks metropolitan area, the second-largest in Nevada, comprises Washoe and Storey Counties. A broader definition, 'Greater Reno', expands the region to include Lyon, the independent city and state capital Carson City, and parts of Placer and Nevada Counties in California. The Reno metro area occupies a valley colloquially known as the Truckee Meadows.
For much of the twentieth century, Reno saw a significant number of people seeking to take advantage of Nevada's relatively lax divorce laws and the city gained a national reputation as a divorce mill. Today, Reno is a tourist destination known for its casino gambling and proximity to Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada. The city is also home to the University of Nevada at Reno, the state's second-largest university by enrollment and the flagship campus of the University of Nevada system.
History
Early history
Archaeological finds place the eastern border of the prehistoric Martis people in the Reno area. As early as the mid-1850s, a few pioneers settled in the Truckee Meadows, a relatively fertile valley through which the Truckee River made its way from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake. In addition to subsistence farming, these early residents could pick up business from travelers along the California Trail, which followed the Truckee westward, before branching off toward Donner Lake, where the formidable obstacle of the Sierra Nevada began.Gold was discovered in the vicinity of Virginia City in 1850, and a modest mining community developed, but the discovery of silver in 1859 at the Comstock Lode led to a mining rush, and thousands of emigrants left their homes, bound for the West, hoping to find a fortune.
To provide the necessary connection between Virginia City and the California Trail, Charles W. Fuller built a log toll bridge across the Truckee River in 1859. A small community that served travelers soon grew near the bridge. After two years, Fuller sold the bridge to Myron C. Lake, who continued to develop the community by adding a grist mill, kiln, and livery stable to the hotel and eating house. He renamed it "Lake's Crossing". Most of what is present-day western Nevada was formed as the Nevada Territory from part of Utah Territory in 1861.
By January 1863, the Central Pacific Railroad had begun laying tracks east from Sacramento, California, eventually connecting with the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah, to form the First transcontinental railroad. Lake deeded land to the CPRR in exchange for its promise to build a depot at Lake's Crossing. In 1864, Washoe County was consolidated with Roop County, and Lake's Crossing became the county's largest town. Lake had earned himself the title "founder of Reno". Once the railroad station was established, the town of Reno officially came into being on May 9, 1868. CPRR construction superintendent Charles Crocker named the community after Major General Jesse Lee Reno, a Union officer killed in the Civil War at the Battle of South Mountain.
In 1871, Reno became the county seat of the newly expanded Washoe County, replacing the county seat in Washoe City. However, political power in Nevada remained with the mining communities, first Virginia City and later Tonopah and Goldfield.
The extension of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad to Reno in 1872 provided a boost to the new city's economy. In the following decades, Reno continued to grow and prosper as a business and agricultural center and became the principal settlement on the transcontinental railroad between Sacramento and Salt Lake City.
As the mining boom waned early in the 20th century, Nevada's centers of political and business activity shifted to the non-mining communities, especially Reno and Las Vegas. Nevada is still the third-largest gold producer in the world, after South Africa and Australia; the state yielded 6.9% of the world's supply in 2005 world gold production.
The Reno Arch was erected on Virginia Street in 1926 to promote the upcoming Transcontinental Highways Exposition of 1927. The arch included the words "Nevada's Transcontinental Highways Exposition" and the dates of the exposition. After the exposition, the Reno City Council decided to keep the arch as a permanent downtown gateway, and Mayor E.E. Roberts asked the citizens of Reno to suggest a slogan for the arch. No acceptable slogan was received until a $100 prize was offered, and G.A. Burns of Sacramento was declared the winner on March 14, 1929, with "Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World".
The divorce capital of the world
In the early twentieth century, Nevada became a popular destination for migratory divorce in an era when most states had highly restrictive laws on the subject. Legislation passed in 1931 completed the gradual reduction of the residency requirement from six months to six weeks, and Reno openly advertised itself as the "Divorce Capital of the World". Nevada's laws, which were fairly progressive for the time, allowed numerous grounds for divorce, and Reno's courts quickly gained a reputation for handling cases with both speed and sympathy for those seeking to "untie the knot". From the 1930s through the 1960s, Reno became synonymous with speedy divorce, often referred to colloquially as "the six-week cure". During these decades, the city's reputation drew thousands of divorcees annually, and they in turn became an important part of the local economy. These temporary residents flocked to hotels, boardinghouses, and hospitality ranches, many of which catered primarily to those waiting out the six-week residency requirement before their court date.Numerous local businesses openly courted these visitors, such as R. Herz & Bro, a jewelry store that offered ring resetting services to the recently divorced and the luxurious El Cortez Hotel, which was built in part to accommodate the more affluent among Reno's six-week guests. The majority of those who came to Reno for divorce were women as Nevada did not require both parties in a divorce case to be present in court, and men often could not take that much time off from work. Although new "residents" seeking divorce were required to swear under oath that they intended to make Nevada their permanent home, most left soon after obtaining their divorce decree, which often occurred on the same day as the initial court hearing.
In addition to tens of thousands of ordinary people, Reno also became a major destination for celebrities and the very wealthy looking to end their marriages as quickly as possible. Some of the many famous personages who got divorced in Reno include Mary Pickford, Jack Dempsey, General Douglas MacArthur, Carole Lombard, Tallulah Bankhead, Adlai Stevenson II, Lana Turner, Nelson Rockefeller, Georges Simenon, Rita Hayworth, Gloria Vanderbilt and Cornelius Vanderbilt IV. The latter was married seven times and had five of his six divorces in Nevada. Mr. Vanderbilt was so taken with Reno that, unlike most migrant divorcees, he eventually settled there permanently.
In the 1939 film The Women, Reno and its divorce culture serve as a backdrop to a significant part of the plot. Ernie Pyle once wrote in one of his columns, "All the people you saw on the streets in Reno were obviously there to get divorces." In Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, published in 1943, the New York-based female protagonist tells a friend, "I am going to Reno," which was understood as declaring their intention to get a divorce.
Reno's divorce industry declined rapidly after the 1970s as other states, including California, liberalized their divorce laws, reducing Nevada's legal advantage.
Gambling and modern Reno
Reno took a leap forward when the state of Nevada legalized open gambling on March 19, 1931, at the same time as it liberalized its divorce laws. The statewide push for legal Nevada gambling was led by Reno entrepreneur Bill Graham, who owned the Bank Club Casino in Reno, which was on Center Street. No other state offered legalized casino gaming like Nevada did in the 1930s, and casinos such as the Bank Club and Palace were popular. A few states had legal parimutuel horse racing, but no other state had legal casino gambling.Within a few years, the Bank Club, owned by George Wingfield, Bill Graham, and Jim McKay, was the state's largest employer and the largest casino in the world. Wingfield owned most of the buildings in town that housed gaming and took a percentage of the profits, along with his rent.
As the divorce industry declined, gambling became the major Reno industry. While gaming pioneers such as "Pappy" and Harold Smith of Harold's Club and Bill Harrah of the soon-to-dominate Harrah's Casino set up shop in the 1930s, the war years of the 1940s cemented Reno as the place to play for two decades. Beginning in the 1950s, the need for economic diversification beyond gaming fueled a movement for more lenient business taxation.
At 1:03 pm, on February 5, 1957, two explosions, caused by natural gas leaking into the maze of pipes and ditches under the city, and an ensuing fire, destroyed five buildings in the vicinity of Sierra and First Streets along the Truckee River. The disaster killed two people and injured 49. The first explosion hit under the block of shops on the west side of Sierra Street, the second, across Sierra Street, now the site of the Palladio.
The presence of a main east–west rail line, the emerging interstate highway system, a favorable state tax climate, and relatively inexpensive land created good conditions for warehousing and distribution of goods.
In the 1980s, Indian gaming rules were relaxed, and starting in 2000, Californian Native casinos began to cut into Reno casino revenues. Major new construction projects have been completed in the Reno and Sparks areas. A few new luxury communities were built in Truckee, California, about west of Reno on Interstate 80. Reno also is an outdoor recreation destination, due to its proximity to the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe, and numerous ski resorts in the region.
In 2018, the city officially changed its flag after a local contest was held. In recent years, the Reno metro area − spurred by large-scale investments from Greater Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area companies such as Amazon, Tesla, Panasonic, Microsoft, Apple, and Google − has become a new major technology center in the United States.