I had a post about this a couple of years ago:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/nevada-still-a-territory.330447/
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Harry Truman in 1955:
"Then we came to the great gambling and marriage destruction hell, known as Nevada. To look at it from the air it is just that--hell on earth. There are tiny green specks on the landscape where dice, roulette, light-o-loves, crooked poker and gambling thugs thrive. Such places should be abolished and so should Nevada. It should never have been made a State. A county in the great State of California would be too much of a civil existence for that dead and sinful territory. Think of that awful, sinful place having two Senators and a congressman in Washington, and Alaska and Hawaii not represented. It is a travesty on our system and a disgrace to free government.
"Well, we finally passed the hell hole of iniquity by flying over one of the most beautiful spots in the whole world--Lake Tahoe..."
http://books.google.com/books?id=DVVffTwVVy4C&pg=PA317
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Suppose Nevada indeed had remained a territory and *never* became a state? This is more plausible than you may think. (The tough part is how to avoid it being made a state during the ACW to help assure Lincoln's re-election. Maybe the solid Democratic opposition is joined by some Republicans who are bothered by the territory's sparse population, who for some reason don't like the particular Republicans Nevada seems likely to elect to Congress, and who don't think three electoral votes are likely to be decisive anyway. Similar objections defeat subsequent attempts to admit Nevada during Reconstruction, and during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Nevada will actually be *losing* population, so its immediate admission becomes almost unthinkable.)
Remember that in OTL Nevada did not even approach the population of an average congressional district until the 1970 census. As late as 1950 it had only 160,083 people--less than half the population of the average congressional district in the 1950's. If the US government is firm about not allowing gambling, easy marriage and divorce, etc., maybe it *never * becomes populous enough.
And another reason it might never have enough people: it might not even include Las Vegas!: " "On May 5, 1866, the United States Congress approved legislation transferring the portions of Pah-Ute and Mohave counties west of the Colorado River and west of 114 degrees west longitude to the state of Nevada. The assignment took effect on January 18, 1867.[4] The Arizona Territory lodged multiple protests with Congress and attempted for several years to have the transfer reversed, but was unable to overturn the change of possession."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pah-Ute_County,_Arizona_Territory Would Congress transfer it to a mere territory? And without Clark County (Las Vegas and vicinity) Nevada even in 2010 would have only 749,282 people--just slightly more than the average congressional district.
With statehood looking hopeless, does Nevada indeed become a huge county of California? (It's not going to become part of Utah--Mormons are a substantial minority but no more than a minority.)
(Incidentally, after starting research on this subject, I noticed that Rich Rostrom had started a thread on it a few years ago in soc.history.what-if.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/cTytau2kNRs/Eket7Te-0IQJ)