Teresa Scanlan, Miss Nebraska is crowned Miss America 2011 during the Miss America pageant, Saturday in Las Vegas.

A 17-year-old aspiring politician from Nebraska captured the Miss America crown on Saturday after beating 52 other young women from across the United States.

Teresa Scanlan won a $50,000 scholarship and a yearlong run with the crown at the competition at the Planet Hollywood casino-resort in Las Vegas, giving the Cornhusker State its first-ever win at the pageant.

Pageant officials said she was the youngest Miss America since the pageant’s first competition in 1921, when Margaret Gorman of the District of Columbia won at age 15. But the organization’s website listed at least two other young women who were younger than Scanlan when they won: Marian Bergeron of Connecticut, who was 15 1/2 when she won in 1933, and California’s Rosemary LaPlanche, who was 16 in 1940 and later found to be ineligible because of age limits implemented two years before.