Panaca: Southern Nevada's First Settlement

In eighteen sixty-four, a party of Mormon settlers moved into Meadow Valley and established the first permanent community in what would become southern Nevada. The name Panaca comes from a Southern Paiute word, pan-nuk-ker, meaning metal or wealth, an appropriate choice for a settlement that would soon be feeding miners from the silver boom at Pioche, about eleven miles to the north. The settlers laid out streets in the wide Mormon grid pattern, dug irrigation ditches, planted orchards and gardens, and built a school.

When Congress moved the Nevada boundary eastward in eighteen sixty-six, Panaca found itself in a new state without moving an inch. The town is still there, still small, the first permanent settlement by European Americans in southern Nevada.