State Flower:

Sagebrush

State Bird:

Mountain Bluebird

State Tree:

Single-Leaf Pinion

State Flag:

In 1929 resident Louis Shellback III entered his design in a state-sponsored contest for a new flag. His elegant display of the State seal won the contest and the $25 award money. The large star in the seal stands for the state metal, silver, which was a tremendous help in funding the Civil War. The state flower, Sagebrush, is also shown. The words "Battle Born" are there because the state was admitted to the Union during the Civil War.

Famous Person:

Walter van Tilburg Clark

Novelist and short story writer Walter van Tilburg Clark was born August 3, 1909 in Maine, but he grew up and spent most of his life in Reno, Nevada. His adopted land became the background for his popular stories of the American West. Most of Clark's stories dealt with difficult philosophical or moral issues. The best known of these is The Ox-Bow Incident. Written in 1940 it tells the tale of an 1885 lynching of three innocent men. Three years later the book was made into a provocative movie that is still talked about to this day.