If you've got a terrific set of chin whiskers, you may want to get in on a competition this coming Saturday. The annual Nevada Day Beard Contest has become one of the most popular events of the Carson City celebration of statehood.

There are showdowns among those with the fullest beards, the longest, the whitest, the blackest, the best salt-and-pepper, the best groomed, the scruffiest – and the most bearded community (just try to compete with Virginia City on that one – they've won for the past six years).

The annual celebration of Nevada's admission to the United States on Oct. 31, 1864, has traditionally been held in the capital, Carson City, named for Kit Carson, one of the state's more colorful characters.

For more than 100 years, the party has been held every Oct. 31, but the Nevada Legislature bowed to popular will in 1999, changing the holiday (state offices and schools are closed) to the last Friday in October, clearly allowing for the additional income provided by a three-day weekend.

For a long time, Nevada Day was celebrated along with Halloween, and children did their trick-or-treating on Oct. 30 so as not to conflict with other festivities. Of course, many took the opportunity to gather two nights' worth of spoils.

The coincidence with Halloween has been the subject of jokes forever – a freaky holiday, a freaky state – the first to have legalized gambling, still the only to have legalized prostitution, the Nevada Test Site, and the location of the Nevada desert as the scene for so many mutant creatures and alien invaders in those 1950s horror classics.

A few competitors in the beard contest look a little like creatures from those movies, but any similarity is entirely coincidental. It takes place after the Saturday morning parade in the amphitheater just south of the Capitol steps.

Of unique interest is the annual rock drilling contest in the Carson Nugget parking lot after the parade. Competitors use 4 1/2-pound hammers to pound 11 bits of graduated steel into a 4,320-pound hunk of Sierra white granite. The object is to drill 3/4 of an inch or more and the only assistance they can have is from someone running water into the hole to wash out the bits. The record in this competition was set in 1993 when Scott Haven of Elko, Nevada, drilled 16.34 inches. The contest dates back to the Comstock mining days.

Also on the schedule for Saturday:

• The annual carnival at Mills Park on Thursday and Friday from 4 p.m. to midnight, and Saturday and Sunday from noon until midnight.

• The Silver State Rumble with amateur boxing in the Carson City Community Theater at 2 p.m. ($10, $8 seniors, $5 youth, children under 6 free).

• The traditional pancake breakfast at the Governor's Mansion (606 North Mountain St.) from 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., featuring pancakes, eggs, and ham for $6, $3 for children under 10, the same price for the past 10 years.

• The mansion will be open for tours from 2-4 p.m.

• The Governor's Ball is at Piper's Opera House in Virginia City from 7-11 p.m. (The $20 admission includes appetizers and desserts. Suggested wear is Victorian, Edwardian, Civil War or "formal Western").

• A free band concert at 4 p.m. at the Nevada State Railroad Museum. That museum also will have the final runs of its McKeen Motor Car, No. 2, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. ($5, children under 17 free).

• The Nevada Day Classic Run/Walk will offer an 8-kilometer run, a 2-mile run, and a 2-mile walk beginning at 8:15 a.m. across from the Carson City Nugget ($35 entry).

• The two most popular events are the Nevada Day Parade at 10 a.m. and the 28th annual free chili feed,

The parade will be preceded by the launch of 15-20 hot-air balloons. Expect a flyover by F-18 Hornets and F-16 Falcons from the Fallon Naval Air Station, plus the C-130 Hercules from the Nevada Air Guard.

Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki will preside over the chili feed from noon to 2 p.m. in the Carson City Nugget.

Now is the time to brush up on a few facts about the "Silver State" (also the "Sagebrush State" and the "Battle-Born State")

• Its statehood came about not, as some believe, because Lincoln needed silver and gold for the Civil War, but because he could use the votes for re-election eight days afterward.

• The word "Nevada" means "snow-covered."

• The state bird is the mountain bluebird; the state reptile, the Desert Tortoise; the state flower, sagebrush.

• Nevada, the seventh largest U.S. state, at different times was part of the Shoshone, Washoe, and Paiute nations; a possession of Spain as part of Alta California; a possession of Mexico; and a part of Utah Territory.

• Residents pronounce the state name with the "a" as in "lad," not with the "a" as in "father," although the latter is clearly closer to the original Spanish. Visiting politicians have been booed for making the error.

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