County Report - Lincoln

At over 10,000 square miles, Lincoln County is the third-largest county in Nevada and the seventh-largest county in the U.S. Bordering Utah and lying just above Nevada’s southern tip, the county is in a prime spot not only for mining and tourism industries, but also for citizens who appreciate rural life along with the technological benefits that come from living nearby metropolitan areas like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.

The county’s high desert landscape, split into a general north and south, is home to a variety of scenic views. Coming up from Clark County, where Lincoln County used to extend before detaching in 1909, the Mojave Desert makes up most of the trip. Here the landscape is hot, dry and barren, with its occasional stretches of green grass patches, sagebrush, junipers and pinyons. At the center of Lincoln County, Great Basin Highway I-93 opens up on all sides to canyons, wilderness areas and towns among them. The Lincoln County Nevada website provides an extensive history of this county that has shifted its border three times in 43 years.

A drive through Lincoln County reveals more and more: mountains, hills, rangeland, pines, a rockier desert and more pinyon-juniper woodlands. Going north of where a green Crystal Springs meets the Alien Research Center at the I-93 and Route 318 junction, hills turn into mountains and become rockier and steeper. This continues until Seaman Range, a higher elevation woodland wilderness that is a part of both Lincoln and Nye Counties. Similarly, eastwards towards Utah, a mix of green hills and nested townships make up the scenic view of I-93. This includes Pioche and Caliente, with their mountain bike trails, and Panaca, with its tall, eroded cave-like formations in Cathedral Gorge State Park. All the way up from the south and into the northeast lie dozens of peaks, points of interests and parks: the remote but beautiful Beaver Dam State Park, with its creek beds and campsites; Echo Canyon, with its reservoir for water activities; and Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, an oasis wetland in the Mojave for migratory birds, to name a few.

According to The Lincoln County Nevada website, Lincoln’s population has fluctuated throughout the century, due to “mining, railroad activity, and tourism.” Likewise, the Nevada Economic Assessment Project baseline report shows that, even in the last decade, there has been a population change in each of those mentioned industries. Lincoln is an active, rural community that both tourists and people living there enjoy. The county’s latest "Get Primitive" campaign promotes outdoor adventure with activities such as hiking, birding, fishing, hunting, off-roading, rock climbing, biking and geocaching. Trailheads are found everywhere, and folks will travel two hours up from Las Vegas or three hours or more from elsewhere to enjoy the high desert.

The Lincoln County Town History Project has conducted and edited dozens of oral histories available on the county’s official website. Here lies an entire century of stories surrounding Lincoln. Between this, the controlled layout of the rest of the website, and the activity in the four-to-five major towns around Lincoln, it becomes clear that the community is active, involved and growing.

Lincoln County NEAP

Special Thanks

The NEAP team would like to give our thanks to the following members of the Lincoln County Community who have assisted us in this process.

• Lincoln County Commission
• Lincoln County Regional Development Authority
• Lincoln County Authority of Tourism
• Residents of Lincoln County