A report on Nevada, Elko, Nevada, California Trail and Reno, Nevada

Elko (Shoshoni: Natakkoa, "Rocks Piled on One Another") is the largest city in and county seat of Elko County, Nevada, United States.

Reno is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada-California border, about 22 mi from Lake Tahoe, known as "The Biggest Little City in the World".

In addition to subsistence farming, these early residents could pick up business from travelers along the California Trail, which followed the Truckee westward, before branching off towards Donner Lake, where the formidable obstacle of the Sierra Nevada began.

Though Elko lies along the route of the historic California Trail, it was first inhabited only in 1868, by white settlers, when it was at the east end of the railroad tracks built by the Central Pacific Railroad (the portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad built from California to Utah).

About 1000 mi of the rutted traces of these trails remain in Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and California as historical evidence of the great mass migration westward.

Elko is the largest city between Salt Lake City and Reno, located along Interstate 80.

Its county seat is Reno.

California National Historic Trail

The severely water-challenged Hastings Cutoff trail across the Great Salt Lake's salt flats rejoined the California Trail about 7 mi west of modern-day Elko, Nevada.

Amtrak's California Zephyr train uses the Union Pacific's original transcontinental railroad line in daily service from Chicago to Emeryville, California, serving Elko, Winnemucca, and Reno.

The University of Nevada, Reno is the oldest university in Nevada and Nevada System of Higher Education. In 1886, the state university, previously only a college preparatory school, moved from Elko in remote northeastern Nevada to north of downtown Reno, where it became a full-fledged state college. The university grew slowly over the decades, but it now has an enrollment of 21,353, with most students from within Nevada. Its specialties include mining engineering, agriculture, journalism, business, and one of only two Basque Studies programs in the nation. It houses the National Judicial College. The university was named one of the top 200 colleges in the nation in the most recent U.S. News & World Report National Universities category index.

At the Humboldt Sink (about 100 mi northeast of present-day Reno, Nevada) the Humboldt River disappeared into a marshy alkali laden lake that late in some years was a dry lake bed.