Nevada

14 places with something worth saying about them.

• Battle Mountain, Nevada The fastest a human has ever pedaled a bicycle happened on a flat stretch of highway outside Battle Mountain: just under ninety miles an hour.
• Beowawe, Nevada North America's second largest geyser field, after Yellowstone, was drilled out of existence here in a single year.
• Carlin Tunnel A passenger train derailed at the bridges here in 1939, killing twenty-four people, and investigators ruled it deliberate sabotage that was never solved.
• Derby Dam This low concrete wall east of Reno drained an entire lake off the map.
• El Dorado Canyon (Nevada) During the Civil War, two mining camps a mile apart in this canyon took opposite sides.
• Elko, Nevada The first commercial airmail flight in America ended its run in Elko, Nevada.
• Fernley, Nevada A hundred-year-old irrigation canal broke one January morning and put six feet of water in Fernley's houses.
• Humboldt Cave Archaeologists left a wool sweater in a Nevada cave, and pack rats shredded it and carried the pieces down to bedrock.
• Humboldt River The first trapper to map this river changed its name four times, and none of them stuck.
• Lovelock, Nevada In 1849 this patch of Nevada marsh held two hundred and fifty covered wagons at any given moment.
• Palisade, Nevada A Nevada railroad town staged fake gunfights for arriving trains, and nobody outside the town knew it was theater.
• Reese River The Reese River is called a tributary of the Humboldt, but in most years it never gets there.
• Wilbur D. May Center A department store heir brought home a shrunken head from South America, and it sits in a Reno museum.
• Winnemucca, Nevada The first autobiography ever written by a Native American woman came from the daughter of the chief this Nevada town is named for.