VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Las Vegas Belonged to Arizona Until 1982

The idea that Las Vegas was somehow part of Arizona until as recently as 1982 is a quirky myth that bubbles up in the occasional online forum and alternate history discussion. It persists because of the kernel of strange truth it contains.

When Nevada was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864, Las Vegas was not a part of it. It belonged to a mostly empty slice of the Arizona Territory.

In May 1866, Congress approved extending Nevada’s eastern boundary with land from the Utah Territory and annexing what was then part of Pah-Ute County from the Arizona Territory. (Neither were states yet).

This created the triangle-shaped southern tip of Nevada that today includes Excalibur’s castle, Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum, and “Zombie Burlesque.”

Leaders of the Arizona Territory were not exactly thrilled to be stripped of the valuable mining territory and Colorado River access. They challenged the federal land grab’s legitimacy.

Octavius Decatur Gass — who owned the Las Vegas Ranch and now has a downtown Las Vegas street named after him for it — refused to pay Nevada taxes, publicly declaring himself still an Arizonan. (By 1871, the Arizona Territory finally relented, acknowledging Nevada’s legal jurisdiction.)

Congress stipulated only that the legislature of the still newly minted Silver State — and its governor, Henry Blasdel — formally approve the addition. And that’s exactly what they did on January 18, 1867, legally incorporating the southern territory into Nevada.

Only the boneheads forgot to update Nevada’s constitution to reflect the addition.

State of Confusion

This was just a housekeeping error, a mere legal curiosity too obscure for even a Trivial Pursuit question.

Until a convicted murderer made it news 100 years later.

In 1963, off-duty police officer Jerome Peter Kuk shot and killed Steve Eligie Bowman in Boulder City, Nev. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.

Four years later, Kuk — acting without legal counsel — appealed his sentence on the creative and ballsy grounds that Clark County wasn’t actually in Nevada.

In other words, because Nevada never updated its constitution, prosecutors had lacked the jurisdiction to try him there under state law. (Convicted murderer Antonio Surianello tried making the same argument eight years later, because why not?)

Though the Nevada Supreme Court rejected both appeals, every citizen who followed the news was suddenly aware of the embarrassing oopsie.

Better a Century Late Than Never

So, the Nevada legislature drafted and passed a corrective constitutional amendment in November 1981.

A year later, Nevada voters finalized it as law by an almost two-to-one margin — though voters in rural Mineral County, fuming that Clark County got all the congressional seats and casino money, came within 116 votes of rejecting it out of spite.

“It certainly consumed a lot of people’s time, let’s put it that way,” state historian Guy Rocha told the Nevada Appeal in 2007.  “A tremendous amount of time and energy and money was spent because some people in 1867 didn’t do their jobs. What they left us with was a history of unfinished business.”

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