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Carson
City, Nevada
Just half an hour from Lake
Tahoe, Carson City has a frontier flavor and a
low key character. Is it a great place to
retire?
The State of Nevada
Most of Nevada's
population lives in the Las Vegas area, and the
state is the 35th most populous state in the
union. The capital is Carson City.
More than 85% of the state is actually owned by
the U.S. government. Much of the
landscape is desert or semi-arid (parts of the
Mojave Desert are here), but the western edge of
the state is home to mountains and beautiful
Lake Tahoe. It is quite
possible to drive for hours through Nevada and
only see a handful of other human beings.
Nevada
has belonged to various Indian tribes, Spain,
Mexico and the United States (it became a state
in 1864). Hoards of miners came here
in 1859 with the discovery of silver at the
Comstock Lode, but it was the legalization of
gambling and the institution of quickie divorces
that really put Nevada on the map and made it a
destination state. Today tourism is
the underpinning of the Nevada economy, although
it still has a robust mining culture and is the
4th largest producer of gold in the world. Summers
are beastly hot, with temperatures routinely
topping 100 degrees. Night time winter
temperatures can be downright cold, sometimes
reaching 50 degrees below zero.
Winters are short; rainfall is not much, and
humidity is very low.
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