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The central Nevada seismic belt (CNSB) is a concentration of historical (1915-1932-1954) surface faulting in the western Basin and Range province, forming a linear, nearly continuous 300-km-long rupture zone. Previous results are integrated in this study with new paleoseismic and exploratory trenching data from the historical zones to look for evidence of older, similar beltlike patterns or elevated slip rates that could indicate whether the CNSB is a zone of focused, long-term crustal strain. The data show that the continuous rupture belt produced by the seven earthquakes occurring between 1915 and 1954 is unique in the available paleoseismic record. At the 1954 Fairview Peak fault, the lack of prehistorical faulting in deposits containing the Wilson Creek bed 19 tephra eliminates the possibility of an identical seismic belt in the past 35.4 ka. Our studies also show that the faults have net slip rates ranging from a low of 0.09 mm/yr on the Fairview Peak fault to a high of 0.7 mm/yr on the 1932 Cedar Mountain fault. These are considered moderate to low rates that are similar to most late Quaternary faults in the western Basin and Range province. A space-time comparison shows that the paleoseismic histories for these multiple rupture zones are diverse, and the number and timing of events in each of the zones indicate that there is little evidence for older contemporaneous ruptures of these same faults. Based on these results we reach several conclusions regarding the longer term (≈Holocene) behavior of the CNSB. Although paleoseismic data preclude an older identical rupture belt among the historical zones, consideration of associated Holocene faults within the greater CNSB region indicates that several similar, but not identical, beltlike rupture patterns are plausible during the past 13 ka, although each requires seismic gaps in the along-strike pattern. Although long-term strain (represented by density of young faults) does appear to increase from east... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]