> The feds own like ~90% of Nevada, let's put a top tier research university smack dab in the middle of it. The feds own 85% of Nevada because it's mostly dese

> The feds own like ~90% of Nevada, let's put a top tier research university smack dab in the middle of it. The feds own 85% of Nevada because it's mostly desert and it's not practical to live there; nobody claimed it during the homesteading era, so it was left to the BLM. There's a whole lot of wide-open sagebrush country striped with the occasional mountain range, and very little water. It would be an expensive place to run a college town, since you'd have to truck in literally everything you needed to live on from somewhere else.