Year after year, a steady stream of Californians have moved away,

looking for a cheaper place to live, as well as to do business.

And lately, they haven't needed to go all that far.

Is that horses over there?

Yeah, yep, yep.

Looks like. I mean, I can sort of see it. Just hours away from Silicon Valley, California companies and their employees are

planting their flags into the northern Nevada desert where wild horses roam free.

Yeah, I don't know what they do when it's raining.

Do they act differently?

They love it because sometimes they have a hard time to get into water.

But in recent years, what was once a stream of people has turned into a river, and the locals, they're not happy about it.

I'm Gustavo Riano. You're listening to The Times, Essential News news from the L.A. Times.

It's Friday, March 3, 2023.

Today, how the pandemic put the California exodus to Nevada on overgrey. Here to talk to me about all this is my L.A. Times colleague, Enterprise reporter Noah Beerman. Noah, welcome to the Times. Hi, Gustavo. Okay, so people have been whining about

Californians invading other states, geez, for decades now.

I mean, just ask anyone from Colorado.

So when it comes to Nevada, what's different this time?

Well, in some ways, it is a continuation for sure, but it's supercharged.

So you already had all these people coming in because tech companies were coming in and outside of the region.

But then you got this second wave of people during the pandemic.

And these were people who wanted to be really close to Silicon Valley, easy driving and flying distance, but they wanted to get away.

And their housing prices were much cheaper here, so they could.

...