“What was that Mommy,”…” We just crossed a state line,” said the pilot, who had manipulated the controls of her single-engined plane to induce a bump in the ride. It effectively directs the youngster’s attention to the grand expanse that stretches far below, and directs our attention to admit there are no such lines on the land, they are myth, a cultural phenomenon, but nonetheless have profound meaning. “States have, indeed, often been whimsically enough formed,” Woodrow Wilson wrote, “We have joined mining communities with agriculture, the mountain with the plain, the ranch and farm, and have left the making of uniform rules to the sagacity and practical habit of neighbors ill at ease with one another.”
The lines, or borders, that evolved from treaties, wars, and Congress’s Committee on Territories were followed by building the infrastructure of community; expanded settlement and displacement, commerce and conflict, the building of America; Nevada’s place came during the Civil War.
More to come…
