Abstract The seismicity of Nevada is distributed in several broad zones that connect with significant seismic zones in surrounding states and appear to concentrate the largest earthquakes in the Great Basin province. During the historic record, which extends over the last 140 years, a number of large, damaging earthquakes occurred in some of these zones, and those larger than magnitude 6 typically produced surface rupture. Based on geologic evidence, most of these earthquakes are believed to have occurred on steeply dipping range-front normal faults that penetrate the crust to midcrustal depths. For numerous cases, however, seismic and geodetic data suggest that strike slip and oblique slip occurred at focal depths. Microearthquake data also indicate a preference for dextral strike slip and oblique slip on northerly trending, steeply dipping faults at depths ranging from near-surface to about 15 km. In addition, some discrepancy exists between the orientation of faults inferred from seismic and geologic data. Faults show a tendency to be rotated clockwise relative to preferred nodal plane orientation. Little seismic evidence has been found for slip on low-angle detachment or listric faults in spite of abundant geologic evidence for this deformation style in the last 15 m.y. The existence of seismic evidence for transcurrent slip on northerly trending faults is at variance with popular tectonic models for the large, young structures in the region—the basins and ranges. The seismic data are also not in accord with the abundant northwest and northeast conjugate strike-slip faults that exist in the Walker Lane belt