Nevada
Where it’s not just Vegas.
Las Vegas · Carson City · Reno · Elko
The Journey
Nevada is one of those states that most people narrow down to one city.
Las Vegas is obviously a huge part of the story. The Las Vegas area is home to roughly seventy percent of Nevada’s population, yet occupies only a tiny fraction of the state’s enormous landmass.
I had been to Vegas dozens of times for business, so visiting Nevada with the family gave me a completely new angle.
We started in Reno, the self proclaimed “Biggest Little City in the World.” Why? I am still not entirely sure, but it is cute. Reno was special. Downtown is home to the largest outdoor climbing wall in the world! And our climbing experts, Rachel and Leah, would happily have spent days on it. They got a few hours instead.
In Carson City, we visited the humble beige State Capitol with its silver dome, continuing our journey through every capital in America. We also spent time at the Nevada State Railroad Museum, learning about the trains that helped connect the West.
Driving through northern Nevada between Carlin and Elko gave us another side of the state entirely. We passed active mining operations, with giant trucks and machinery working through the landscape searching for gold. And here and there came the inevitable Nevada roadside signs advertising everything from “sexy beautiful girls” to “fantasy Asian girls,” which led to some interesting explanations from the front seat.
Then we headed south toward Las Vegas. The girls loved the lights, the shows, and the overwhelming energy of a city that seems determined never to sleep.
We also visited Hoover Dam, where we marveled at one of America’s great engineering achievements. Naturally, we tried the famous water experiment, pouring water over the side only to watch the powerful upward air currents send it flying right back toward us.
That contrast is what made Nevada so interesting to me.
Bright lights and empty desert. Gold mines and casinos. Reno and Vegas. Enormous stretches of almost nothing, followed suddenly by places filled with everything.
Jewish Nevada
Our Jewish Nevada experience stretched from Reno all the way to Las Vegas.
In Reno, we visited Temple Emanu El, founded in 1922 and part of the earliest organized Jewish life in the state. Finding an established Jewish community there, surrounded by mountains and miles of Nevada landscape, was another reminder of how Jewish life somehow finds its way almost everywhere.
Las Vegas was a completely different story. We visited local shuls, kosher restaurants, and Jewish establishments and got to experience a large, vibrant community that has grown alongside the city itself.
At the Mob Museum, we also learned about Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, the Jewish gangster whose Flamingo Hotel became part of the early story of modern Las Vegas. His story is certainly not the conventional Jewish contribution to American history, but it is undeniably part of the strange and colorful history of this city.
Today, Greater Las Vegas is home to the overwhelming majority of Jewish life in Nevada, with synagogues, schools, Chabad centers, kosher restaurants, and communities representing many different parts of Jewish life.
Jewish Nevada, much like Nevada itself, grew quickly in a place where few people would once have imagined such a community thriving.
What Stayed With Me
What stayed with me about Nevada was how a tiny portion of an enormous state became its engine.
So much of Nevada is desert, mountains, silence, mining country, and empty road. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, you arrive at Las Vegas, filled with lights, buildings, people, entertainment, and nonstop activity.
There is something very American about that.
Someone looked at the middle of the desert and decided to build anyway.
And then others came, and built more, until a place that looked like almost nothing became one of the most recognizable cities in the world.
Nevada reminded me how much people can create in a place where, at first glance, there seems to be nothing at all.
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