For 60 years, the Southern Pacific’s Slim Princess served as the lifeline to remote areas of western Nevada and eastern California.

In 1880, the financiers of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad organized the Carson & Colorado Railroad to build a narrow-gauge line from the Carson River to the Colorado River, but that dream was never fully realized. In 1900, the Southern Pacific Railroad purchased the 300-mile line, envisioning it as a shortcut from Nevada to Southern California. The northern half of the line was converted to standard gauge in 1905. The section from Mina, Nevada, to Keeler, California, remained an isolated and celebrated part of the Southern Pacific until it succumbed to the scrapper’s torch in 1960.

Author Andrew Brandon has over 30 years of extensive study in railroad history and involvement with noteworthy projects in the railroad preservation community. Since 2001, he has been involved with the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Nevada City, where he currently serves as the curator. Brandon also serves on board of directors for the Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge Historical Society and the Nevada–California–Oregon Railway. In 2009, he helped establish PacificNG.org—a website dedicated to researching narrow-gauge railroads around the Pacific Rim.

Since Pres. Harry Truman established the Nevada Test Site (NTS) in December 1950, it has played a vital role in the security of the United States. For four decades, the test site's primary purpose was developmental testing of nuclear explosives. Atmospheric tests conducted over Yucca Flat and Frenchman Flat between 1951 and 1962 involved thousands of Army troops and Marines simulating nuclear battlefield conditions. Civil defense planners studied blast and radiation effects and evaluated bomb shelter designs. Testing moved underground in 1963 to eliminate radioactive fallout. Other projects at the NTS included nuclear rocket engine development for space travel, training for NASA's Apollo astronauts, excavation experiments, radioactive waste storage studies, and aircraft testing. Since the last underground nuclear test in 1992, this geographically diverse testing and training complex north of Las Vegas—known since 2010 as the Nevada National Security Site—has been used to support nuclear stockpile stewardship and as a unique outdoor laboratory for government and industry research and development efforts.

The Nevada Northern Railway is the sole survivor from a grand era when railroads served mines throughout the state. Built in 1905-1906 to develop the incredible copper deposits of the Nevada Consolidated Copper Company in White Pine County, it was--and still is--a workaday railroad. Although its primary purpose was to haul ore, it eventually served the community with a daily passenger train between East Ely and Cobre until 1941. Over 4.5 million people rode the trains, and a mountain of copper ore was moved. In 1983, the Nevada Northern Railway ceased operating, and two years later the entire ore line, including the railroad's yard and shop facilities in East Ely, was donated to the White Pine Historical Railroad Foundation that now operates the railway as a museum. Instead of relics in glass cases or repainted old equipment on static display, the museum preserves a working steam railroad, delighting train enthusiasts year-round with passenger service and special seasonal excursions.

Las Vegas is truly a city unlike any other. Beginning as a railroad stop in the desert and growing to become one of the top tourist destinations in the nation, the city continues to grow and redefine itself.

Maggie Bukowski Gaspar has lived in Las Vegas for 20 years and is the curator of Manuscripts, Photographs, and Library at the Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas. All historic images in this book come from the museum’s collection. 

Area 51, a top secret military installation for testing unacknowledged, or black, projects, lies in a desert valley northwest of Las Vegas. During the Cold War, CIA and Air Force officials chose this remote location to shield such efforts from foreign spies and US citizens. Although the base has been known by many names—Paradise Ranch, Watertown, and Dreamland, among others—the designation Area 51 has taken root most deeply in the public imagination. Since 1955, it has grown from a temporary camp into a national test facility supporting nearly 2,000 military and civilian workers and dozens of projects, including aircraft capable of cruising at Mach 3 and stealth airplanes that are virtually invisible to radar. Although secrecy surrounding Area 51 spawned rumors of UFOs and reverse-engineered alien spacecraft, declassified photographs provide a rare glimpse into the true nature of America's most famous secret base.

Established by Sandia Corporation in 1957, Tonopah Test Range (TTR) in Nevada provided an isolated place for the Atomic Energy Commission and successor agencies to test ballistic characteristics and non-nuclear components of atomic bombs. Also known as Area 52, the vast outdoor laboratory served this purpose throughout the Cold War arms race and continues to play a vital role in the stewardship and maintenance of the United States' nuclear arsenal. The range has been used for training exercises, testing rockets, development of electronic warfare systems and unmanned aerial vehicles, and nuclear safety experiments. During the late 1970s, the Air Force constructed an airfield for a clandestine squadron of captured Russian fighter planes that were used for tactical evaluations and to provide realistic air combat training for thousands of US airmen. The TTR airfield also served as the first operational base for the F-117A stealth fighter, an airplane designed to be virtually invisible to detection by radar. Now operated primarily by Sandia National Laboratories for the Department of Energy and, in part, by the Air Force Materiel Command, TTR remains a valuable national asset with unparalleled capabilities.