Albert Bierstadt’s 1868 painting Among the Sierra Nevada, California. An oil on canvas landscape painting featuring a herd of deer drinking from a lake in the foreground while exaggeratingly majestic, snow-capped mountains with waterfalls rise in the background.
1 November 2021
Nevada is a state in the western United States. It takes its name from the Sierra Nevada mountains, which lie on the state’s border with California. In Spanish, Sierra Nevada simply means snow-covered mountains. It’s a rather obvious name for a mountain range, and as a result, there are a number of ranges bearing that name, in Spain, Argentina and Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and, of course, the United States.
Nevada is the home to numerous Indigenous tribes, including the Koso, Paiute, Shoshoni, Walapi, Washoe, and Ute. Languages spoken belong primarily to the Southern Athabaskan (Apachean) and Uto-Aztecan families. While it was settler-colonists who conferred the present name on the state, numerous local, Indigenous placenames are still in use. Perhaps the most famous is Tahoe, which comes from the Washoe /dá’aw/, meaning lake.
The original Sierra Nevada are in southeastern Spain. References to that mountain range appear in English by 1627. From Gabriel Richardson’s Of the State of Europe of that year:
This whole ridge is named Orospeda by Strabo. Ptolemy calleth part hereof Montem Illipulam, now the tract of the Alpuxarras. It now hath diverse names. Neere vnto the towne of Molina it is called Monte de Molina; to Cuença Monte de Cuença; to Alcaraz Sierra de Alcaraz; to Segura Monte de Segura; to Granado Sierra Nevada; to Velez Malaga the Alpuxarras; and to Ronda Sierra de Ronda.
While there are many earlier references to the Spanish and South and Central American ranges to be found in English, references to the Sierra Nevada that is now in the United States don’t appear in English-language writing until quite late. The earliest reference I have found is in a March 1845 letter by John C. Fremont, published in the Daily Union of 20 May 1845. Fremont, a U.S. Army officer, made several expeditions of exploration and later was instrumental in the United States seizing California from Mexico. Fremont writes:
Unhappily, much of what we had collected was lost by accidents of serious import to ourselves, as well as to our animals and collections. In the gorges and ridges of the Sierra Nevada, of the Alta California, we lost fourteen horses and mules, falling from rocks or precipices into the chasms of rivers, bottomless to us and to them, and one of them loaded with bales of plants collected on a line of two thousand miles of travel.
Gold was discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in 1848, and by the next year, the clipped Nevada was being used to refer to the mountain range and the territory around it. From the Coldwater Sentinel of Michigan, 26 January 1849:
Vast quantities of lumber will be required in California for the construction of buildings, and we have no doubt, in time, the pine forests of the Nevada will supply beautiful and substantial houses for the Sandwich Islanders, Chinese, Mexicans and South American.
Moves to create a separate Nevada Territory began in 1857, as reported in Chicago’s Daily Democratic Press of 25 March of that year:
We find in a late California paper mention made of information having been received from Washington, D.C., to the effect that a bill was in preparation by Senator Douglas for the formation of a new Territory on the eastern boundary of California, to consist of all Western Utah and Northeastern New Mexico, and from the Oregon line to the Colorado River. The name intended for it is Nevada, taken from the great Sierra, which lies on its western boundary.
The Nevada Territory was officially formed in 1861, and Nevada became the thirty-sixth state in 1864.
Sources:
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Coldwater Sentinel (Michigan), 26 January 1849, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v., Nevada, Sierra Nevada. Oxfordreference.com.
Fremont, John C. “‘Westward, Ho!’—Expeditions to Oregon” (March 1845). The Daily Union (Washington, DC), 20 May 1845, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Nevada Territory.” Daily Democratic Press (Chicago), 25 March 1857, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2003, modified March 2019, s.v. Nevadan, adj. and n.
Richardson, Gabriel. Of the State of Europe. Oxford: Henry Cripps, 1627, Book 6, 2. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Albert Bierstadt, 1868. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Image is in the public domain as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work of art.