Job security for mapmakers

The land we now know as Clark County has undergone several boundary and jurisdictional changes since the mid-19th century.

■ 1851: What is now the southern tip of Nevada becomes part of the New Mexico Territory, which includes much of the land won by the U.S. during the Mexican-american War.

■ 1863: After being excluded from the newly designated Nevada Territory in 1861, the future Clark County winds up as the remote, northwestern corner of the Arizona Territory.

■ 1866: Congress grants all of the Arizona Territory west of the Colorado River to the new state of Nevada, which officially accepts the additional land in 1867. The people living there won’t find out about the change for several more years, when tax collectors are sent to deliver the news.

■ 1909: Clark County is born when the Nevada Legislature splits Lincoln County roughly in half and makes Las Vegas the seat of government in the new jurisdiction.

Henry Brean for those backing the Union and “Lucky Jim,” about a mile down the canyon, for those who favored the Confederacy.

Occasionally, fights would break out between the two camps. “They didn’t get along with each other,” the historian said. “They weren’t willing to fight for their sides in the war, but they would fight with each other.”

One infamous resident of Buster Falls, a miner and hired gun named Bill Piette, liked to shoot holes in the Confederate flag that flew over Lucky Jim, but none of quarrels between the camps ever resulted in significant bloodshed, Hall-patton said.

CONFEDERATE

After the Civil War ended, the two camps were abandoned, though Eldorado lived on for a time as Nevada’s busiest Colorado River steamboat port.

Ownership confusion

Confusion over who owned the southern tip of Nevada would live on as well.

Congress transferred the triangle of desert to Nevada on May 5, 1866, and the state Legislature accepted the additional land Jan. 18, 1867. But for years afterward, residents, tax collectors, postmasters and even the U.S. Army treated the area as if it were still a part of the Arizona Territory.

The confusion was especially pronounced in the isolation of Eldorado Canyon, where the fastest route to Nevada’s new state capital was down the Colorado, through the Gulf of California and up the Pacific Coast to San Francisco by boat then overland to Carson City.

“People had no idea where they were. They were out in the middle of nowhere, in a miserable place with no wood and no water,” Hall-patton said. “At this point, it was about as far as you could get from anywhere.”

Birth of Las Vegas

Officials in Arizona objected to having a portion of their territory taken away, but they found few allies in Congress after “leaning Southern” during the

Civil War, Hall-patton said. Though it was never the stated reason for the land grant to Nevada, he said, the federal government’s gift seemed to carry with it a none-too-subtle message to those in Arizona who sided with Confederacy.

The price of that betrayal was roughly 12,000 square miles, and Nevada has done a lot with that extra land over the past 150 years.

The boundary adjustment gave the state direct access to the Colorado River, which supplies 90 percent of the drinking water for the Las Vegas Valley’s 2 million residents and 40 million annual visitors.

It also guaranteed Nevada a huge piece of the Hoover Dam project and the bulk of the construction jobs it created during the Great Depression.

Had this land remained part of Arizona, you can forget about legal gambling, quickie marriage and divorce and many of the other things that helped Las Vegas grow into the Entertainment Capital of the World, Hall-patton said.

“We wouldn’t be the Clark County we are today,” he said. “We’d be more like Kingman.”

Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Follow @Refriedbrean on Twitter.