Nevada
Sept. 12, 1885: Morrill Hall construction begins (in Reno, not Carson City)
Watch first day of school at UNR’s $155M business building
Here’s a first look, including student reactions, of new University of Nevada, Reno, John Tulloch Business Building from UNR’s first day of school.
The cornerstone of Morrill Hall, the first building on the University of Nevada, Reno campus, was laid on Sept. 12, 1885.
The original plans called for a two-story building at the cost of no more than $20,000 (about $700,000 in today’s dollars). When the three-story Morrill Hall was completed in 1886, it came in under budget at $13,500 (about $480,000 today).
At the time, it housed the entire university — classrooms, offices, library and all. It’s still standing, serving as the home of UNR’s development and alumni relations department.
But if one vote had flipped in the Nevada Legislature in 1885, the university instead would have moved to Carson City.
And it was a Carson City senator that cast the deciding vote not to move the campus to the state capital.
University of Nevada’s 11-year Elko experiment
By all accounts, the state university at Elko was a disaster.
The school, known then as Nevada State University, began instruction Oct. 12, 1874, with a class of seven students inside a brand-new brick building in Elko.
There were only 40,000 people in all of Nevada in 1874, mainly clustered in mining towns with questionable futures. There were only about 50 schoolhouses in the state; 15 were rented and eight were classed by the superintendent of public instruction as unfit for use. Carson City and Virginia City had the only high schools.
Elko was chosen as the site for the new school because it made the most attractive offer to the state Legislature in 1873, agreeing to provide and furnish the building.
For four years, Nevada had a one-man university. D.R. Sessions, a native of South Carolina and a scholar in Greek, Latin and modern literatures, was the faculty and staff of the institution. This talented educator, who was later to be superintendent of public instruction for the state, taught a wide variety of preparatory courses to a handful of students.
The remote location proved to be too great a challenge, and the Elko campus closed on July 15, 1885, with a class of 15 students.
Carson City opts for prison over university
By 1883, Nevada politicians already were pushing to move the university to the more populated western side of the state, and funding to the Elko campus was reduced during the Legislature’s 1883 session.
It was during the next session that legislators pushed to resolve the issue. On Feb. 19, 1885, a pair of dueling bills were introduced — one to move the campus to Reno, and another to move it to Carson City.
The other political football that session: the location of the state prison, which meant funding and jobs.
Carson City Senator Hub Parker voted against the university-to-Carson bill, allowing the university-to-Reno bill to pass a few days later. In doing so, Parker picked up some key votes to keep the state prison in Carson City, its home since 1862.
“Senator Parker made a gallant fight yesterday for the State Prison and kept Reno from pouncing on it,” the Carson Appeal editorialized on March 1. “By voting against the removal of the University from Elko to Carson, he gained five votes to keep the State Prison here, and it was a good trade.”
Requirements for admission, 1874
The enrollment at the Elko campus may have been light, but the academics were rigorous. The Nevada State Journal’s Oct. 10, 1874 edition published the admission requirements. Among them: knowledge of English language syntax, and thorough familiarity of intermediate geography. (There were only 37 states. How hard could it be?)
Admission also required expertise in Swinton’s Condensed History of the United States and Eaton’s arithmetic texts from the 1870s. Would you be able to gain admission to Nevada State University in 1874, using these actual study questions from the texts?
Brett McGinness is the engagement editor for the Reno Gazette Journal. He’s also the writer of The Reno Memo — a free newsletter about news in the Biggest Little City. Subscribe to the newsletter right here. Consider supporting the Reno Gazette Journal, too.
Nevada
Southern Nevada sees string of shootings, one person killed in 24-hour span
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Las Vegas Metro Police are investigating multiple shootings that occurred across Southern Nevada within a 24-hour period, including one that turned deadly.
The violence began Thursday evening near Flamingo Road and Linq Lane, when officers attempted to stop a stolen vehicle. The driver sped away, driving into oncoming traffic and nearly causing crashes across the valley.
Crime
Stolen car chase leads to fatal officer-involved shooting, LVMPD investigating
The pursuit ended with 3 suspects fleeing on foot. When one armed suspect refused to drop his weapon, officers opened fire, killing him. The remaining suspects were taken into custody.
Hours later, police responded to a deadly shooting at a business in the northeast valley near Craig Road and Nellis Boulevard. Officers arrived to find a man and a woman suffering from gunshot wounds in the parking lot.
Crime
Police searching for suspect after shooting in northeast valley leaves one dead
The woman was transported to the hospital and is expected to survive. The man died at the scene.
Detectives say the victims had been arguing with another man when he opened fire and fled. Officials are asking for the public’s help in identifying and locating the suspect as the investigation continues.
About 30 minutes after that shooting, Metro officers responded to another shooting near the intersection of Rancho Drive and Lake Mead Boulevard, where they found a man with a gunshot wound to the leg.
Traffic
Police activity blocks off all lanes on eastbound Lake Mead Blvd., Rancho Dr.
He was transported to the hospital and is expected to recover. Detectives are investigating.
Overnight, a fourth shooting shut down Craig Road from Lamont Street to Nellis Boulevard. A victim was found with non-life-threatening injuries, and a suspect was detained.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
Nevada
Caltech readies to build world’s most sensitive radio telescope in Nevada
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Caltech researchers are preparing to build a radio telescope that will be the most sensitive ever constructed and survey the sky 100 times faster than any other radio telescope worldwide.
Schmidt Sciences has greenlit construction of the Deep Synoptic Array after the project completed its final design review. The milestone paves the way for construction to begin on the telescope, which is planned for a remote valley in Nevada.
MORE ON FOX5: Conservation groups oppose potential sale of federal lands highlighted in land mapping tool
The array will consist of 1,650 radio dishes, each slightly more than 6 meters in diameter. The array will span an area of about 20 by 16 kilometers. The team plans to build the telescope by 2029, with science operations commencing soon after.
Survey capabilities
“The DSA will survey the entire visible sky several times in its first five years at unprecedented speeds,” said Gregg Hallinan, principal investigator of DSA, professor of astronomy at Caltech, and director of Caltech’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory. “While all other radio telescopes combined have so far found about 20 million radio sources, the DSA will match that in the first day of operations. By the end of its initial survey, it will have discovered about 1 billion new radio sources.”
The telescope will discover radio emission from millions of stars, galaxies, and other cosmic objects. It will address the mysteries of black holes, pulsars and fast radio bursts. It will also probe the physics of dark matter and gravity, and it will measure the structure and expansion of the universe.
“Radio astronomy is about to go from sketch to photograph,” said Vikram Ravi, the co-principal investigator of the DSA and a professor of astronomy at Caltech. “The DSA is looking at a far larger volume of the universe far more often than any other telescope.”
Real-time imaging
The DSA will be capable of making images in real time. The numerous radio dishes will feed into a supercomputer that creates images instantly. The images will be immediately accessible to the worldwide astronomical community.
“Without the radio camera, we would have to store 100 exabytes of data to complete our survey,” Hallinan said. “This would require 5 million hard drives in a multi-billion-dollar facility the size of multiple football fields. The radio camera solves this problem.”
The DSA’s radio camera will convert the raw data to images in real time with the help of an off-site supercomputer built from Graphics Processing Units built by Nvidia. The radio camera images will be given freely to the public with no proprietary period.
“We want the whole world to also have access to the data just as quickly as we do,” said Katie Jameson, the DSA lead project manager.
The DSA will have the ability to detect more than 100,000 intensely powerful flashes of radio light from fast radio bursts and to localize them to their home galaxies. The DSA will also reveal more than 20,000 new pulsars.
“The science that can be done is endless,” Hallinan said. “There will be enough discoveries to occupy every radio astronomer on the planet.”
The DSA is led by Caltech and funded by Schmidt Sciences. It is part of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory System. Two pathfinder projects that led to the DSA, the DSA-110 and the OVRO Long Wavelength Array, were funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.
Nevada
Conservation groups oppose potential sale of federal lands highlighted in land mapping tool
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Conservation groups are pushing back against a new state mapping tool that identifies federal lands potentially available for development in Nevada.
The governor’s office, in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management Nevada, unveiled the interactive map this week to make it easier to find federal land that may be available for development throughout the state and in the Las Vegas Valley.
“It is shocking to look at the map and see how many lands could potentially be sold off,” said Olivia Tanager, executive director of the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter.
Tanager said she was surprised at how many federal lands were identified for disposal when she first looked at the map.
“Places like Red Rock and Sloan Canyon in Southern Nevada are what draw people to live in Southern Nevada. We cannot continue to develop right up onto the boundaries or perhaps even in these precious places,” Tanager said.
The conservation group says the mapping tool is the latest effort to treat Nevada’s public lands as a real estate inventory rather than a shared public resource.
“We know that a lot of these areas are environmentally sensitive. We know that there are endangered species on these lands,” Tanager said.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada unveils interactive tool mapping federal lands available for possible development, other uses
Housing concerns
Lawmakers have proposed using federal lands to create more affordable housing. Several areas at the edges of the Vegas Valley have been identified for potential development on the mapping tool. Tanager said she does not see that as a viable solution.
“The areas on the outskirts or far outside of existing urban areas are wholly inappropriate for affordable housing. Housing that is located that far away from services will never be truly affordable,” Tanager said. “As folks have to live further and further away from resources like schools and grocery stores, transportation costs go up substantially.”
The conservation group says the valley should fill in open lots and build upward within the existing urban core instead of building outward.
“We know that sprawl and developing on the outskirts of the valley worsens air quality as well from increased transportation,” Tanager said. “We know that sprawl is incredibly water-intensive. The further out you build, the harder it is to recapture that water.”
The Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter says treating federal lands as disposable assets could set a dangerous precedent that accelerates privatization efforts and undermines the principle that public lands should remain in public hands for future generations.
Approximately 85% of Nevada’s total land area is owned by the federal government.
The state says the tool is designed to bolster information sharing about federal lands. The mapping tool is available here.
Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.
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