Devils Will Reign

Nevada entered the Union in 1864 as the thirty-sixth state, a mere two decades after John Charles Fremont and his party undertook the first Euro-American exploration of the Great Basin. However, the intervening years were exceptionally eventful - gold was discovered in California in 1848, the debate over slavery in the territories made the far West a significant topic of congressional concern, and the Mormon establishment in Utah stimulated national suspicion of the sect's ambitions and policies - giving this remote, sparsely populated region on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada an importance that it probably would not have had in less turbulent times. In 1849, more than 22,000 people traveled the emigrant trails across the Great Basin, and soon Mormons from Utah set up a trading station in the Carson Valley to reap profit from the emigrant trade and anchor the western periphery of what their leader, Brigham Young, envisioned as a Mormon inland empire.