Reno became an affordable, booming destination. Fires show the limits of all that growth
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Set us as preferred Over the last 15 years, the population of Reno — the so-called Biggest Little City in the World — has surged, thanks in large part to an influx of Californians drawn by Nevada’s cheaper housing, booming tech industry and relative lack of soul-crushing traffic.From 2010 to 2025, Reno’s population grew an astonishing 26%, to more than 283,000 people.With all that growth, new development has expanded farther and farther into the fire-prone scrubland surrounding the Sierra Nevada foothills city just across the California border.This week, a massive fire posed a threat to these new boomtowns.The Hawk fire forced the harried evacuation of more than 40,000 people.
It ignited near a hiking trail in the parched hills just northwest of the city on Saturday.“It basically started in a residential neighborhood,” said Chris Buckley, a spokeswoman for the unified incident command fighting the blaze.
Politics Californians moving to Nevada hope to re-create a California lifestyle — a tech hub with mountain views — without the Golden State’s problems.It’s not working exactly as planned.“There are so many more people moving into these areas because they’re so desirable,” said Buckley, who works for the U.S.
Forest Service.“Who doesn’t want to move to a beautiful, wild area and have all the conveniences of the city? But it really strains the wildland-urban interface.” Reno is discovering what California has long known: Sprawling development into fire-prone areas can put those new communities at risk.The urban-wildland interface — where human development intermingles with wild places such as scrublands, grasslands and forests — is the fastest-growing land-use type in the United States.
And the Hawk fire is the latest example of the growing threat of destructive urban conflagrations in the...