Historical Society Quarterly, No

Home , Herbert Eugene Bolton, Lamoille Canyon, Mustang Ranch, Sarah Winnemucca, Shelley Berkley, Virginia Street Bridge

HistoricalNevada Society Quarterly

John B. Reid Hillary Velázquez Juliet S. Pierson Editor-in-Chief & Frank Ozaki Manuscript Editor Production & Design Joyce M. Cox Proofreader

Volume 58 2015 Numbers 1-4

Contents Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington Kyhl Lyndgaard 1 Editor’s Note

6 Opening the Mountains The Civilian Conservation Corps and the U.S. Forest Service at Lamoille Canyon and Mount Charleston, Nevada “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” Jonathan Foster Las Vegas’s Failure to Open a Resort Hotel, 1905-1940 Larry Dale Gragg 27 Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington Kyhl Lyndgaard

44 “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” Las Vegas’s Failure to Open a Resort Hotel, 1905-1940 larry Dale Gragg

Front Cover: Camp Mount Charleston, June 1940. (Gerald W. Williams Collection, Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center) 66 Notes and Documents Noble Getchell: “Mr. Republican” During Nevada’s New Deal James W. Hulse

Book Reviews

71 The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada from the Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip. By Richard O. Davies (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2014) Reviewed by Randy Roberts

73 We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here: Work, Community, and Memory on California’s Round Valley Reservation, 1850-1941. By William J. Bauer, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009) Reviewed by Scott L. Stabler, Ph.D

75 How Cities Won the West. By Carl Abbott (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008) Reviewed by Eugene P. Moehring

78 Cumulative Index – Volume 57 3

Editor’s Note

If you cover up the left half of the 1820 map of the United States—the War- ner Pocket Map, for example—you will have no difficulty identifying today’s political and geographical boundaries. The Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay are very nearly perfectly rendered to the amateur eye. The eastern part of Tex- as, then part of Mexico, is easily recognizable as well. Some aspects are slightly off to the modern eye. Florida seems to hang from Georgia rather than jutting into the Atlantic, for example. But, over-all, the map is a carefully crafted representation of the eastern United States. Uncover the left side, though, and the view is very different. While the coast of California and the San Francisco Bay are easily identifiable, the territory between the crest of the Sierra range and the Great Salt Lake is empty. Well, not completely empty—the map shows a river connecting the area near Salt Lake to the San Francisco Bay. What a boon for travelers this would be! Sadly, such a river does not exist; John C. Frémont dispelled the myth during his 1843-44 expedition. The point of this example is that as late as 1827, the only known detail of the land between the Sierra Nevada mountains and Salt Lake was a river—the Rio Buenaventura river—a river that never existed. The one thing that was known about Nevada in 1820 was actually not known at all. In 1827, the opening of Nevada to white Americans, and the closing of its open spaces to its Native American population, began. American trap- pers, explorers, and emigrants began opening up this area gradually (as they gradually fenced off or closed it to the area’s first inhabitants) in the following decades. One key to opening Nevada’s forbidding terrain to exploration and settlement was the development of roads. In the early period, we often refer to these as paths or trails in their early stages, but when they accommodate a vehicle—a wagon or stagecoach, perhaps—they are roads, and the placement of these roads transforms the land and those who live around them. For instance, nineteenth-century newspapers often used the word “magic” to describe the changes to a place after the railroad reached it. And these roads are the unseen force that lies behind all three of the articles in this issue. For instance, let’s examine the subject of Khyl Lyndgaard’s article in this issue—Sarah Winnemucca, the Northern Paiute member of the Kuyuidika-a (Cui-ui Eaters) drive who lived near Pyramid Lake. She became a nationally known lecturer and author, in a career worthy of commemoration in the Unit- 4

ed States Capitol Building. Although we cannot know for sure, it is difficult to imagine Sarah Winnemucca’s life and career without the accident of her birth occurring next to the emigrant trail through Nevada. She was born in the 1840s, just as the emigration through Northern Paiute territory was beginning. She was apprenticed as a young girl to the Ormsby family in Genoa, a trading post along the trail to California. The skills she learned there would be the key to her fame, as well as a source of the controversy that surrounds her. This is not the focus of Lyndgaard’s article, though. In “Sarah Winnemuc- ca Goes to Washington,” Kyhl Lyndgaard uses the bronze statue of Sarah Winnemucca in the U. S. Capitol building as a launchpad for a discussion of history, memory, and the symbolic resonance of Sarah Winnemucca as we contemplate the history of Native Americans in Nevada. Lyndgaard demonstrates how the statue and the memorialization of Sarah Winnemucca reflect and continue the debates about the meaning of the meeting of whites and Na- tive Americans in the West. Opening up Nevada’s formidable terrain is the subject of this issue’s second article. In Jonathan Foster’s “Opening the Mountains: The Civilian Con- servation Corps and the U.S. Forest Service at Lamoille Canyon and Mount Charleston, Nevada,” Foster provides the historical background and context for Nevada’s continuing debate about the appropriate uses of Nevada’s vast open lands, in particular its national forest land. Foster’s article shows us that the idea of national forests being places of recreation to be opened up to visitors has a long history in Nevada. A focus of the Civilian Conservation Corps work in Lamoille Valley and Mount Charleston was the building of roads to open Nevada’s national forests to automobile tourism while maintaining “the utility of the forest as a producer of wood.” Foster shows that contemporary debates about the need to preserve the wilderness itself—to protect these areas both from industrial exploitation of lumber and minerals and from well- meaning campers and hikers—go back to the 1930s. In fact, Foster argues, the “accessibility-centered polices” of the CCC helped to generate and fuel a movement in reaction—an environmental movement to preserve wilderness for its own sake. And opening up Nevada is the subject of this issue’s third article, “‘A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments’: Las Vegas’s Failure to Open a Re- sort Hotel, 1905-1940.” In it Larry Dale Gragg uncovers the long process of building a resort hotel in Las Vegas. Gragg shows that the idea of Las Vegas as a destination for tourists is as old as the city itself, and that the lack of a resort hotel before 1941 was not due to the lack of imagination on the part of early Las Vegas boosters, but rather to a lack of confidence in the prospects of the city on the part of potential investors in such an enterprise. Gragg notes that the end to the “long struggle” came in 1941 when Thomas Hull built the El Rancho Vegas and began the era of the resort hotel in Las Vegas. This was no coincidence. Hull built his hotel not within the Las Vegas city limits but rather 5 along the highway to Los Angeles because, as Eugene Moehring and Michael Green have noted, “As a southern Californian, Hull understood that the growing dominance of cars, trucks, and buses made the highway more important than the railroad for delivering supplies and guests.”1 Finally, this issue concludes with James Hulse’s short biographical essay on Noble Getchell, who made a fortune opening up, in Eliot Lord’s words, the “ore casket” in Nevada’s “dark womb of rock.”2 An early twentieth-century mining entrepreneur and state legislator, Getchell and his name are etched into the memory of many University of Nevada alumni as we remember hours spent in the Getchell Library. John B. Reid Editor-in-Chief

Notes

1Eugene P. Moehring and Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: A Centennial History (Reno & Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2005), 109. 2Eliot Lord, Comstock Mining and Miners, reprint (San Diego: Howell-North, 1959), 311. Opening the Mountains The Civilian Conservation Corps and the U.S. Forest Service at Lamoille Canyon and Mount Charleston, Nevada

Jonathan Foster

In the decades since the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) has been portrayed in the American historical narrative as one of the most successful and popular of all New Deal relief programs.1 From 1939 to 1942, millions of down-on-their-luck young men and World War I veterans spent time in thousands of CCC camps located across the nation and in territorial holdings of the United States. These young men earned a small salary, found purpose in their work, and even broadened their own horizons through participation in CCC-supported educational opportunities. In the process, they transformed the nation’s landscape by planting billions of trees, fighting fires, and opening millions of acres to both recreational and conservationist activities.2 The CCC’s influence proved particularly strong in the national forests. CCC enrollees provided much needed labor for a United States Forest Service (USFS) that, by the 1930s, increasingly addressed the people’s outdoor recreational needs in addition to managing the forests.3 This process was certainly evident in Nevada. A local-level comparison of similar CCC camps in Nevada’s national forest brings into focus the historically

Jonathan Foster teaches history (U.S., environmental, and Western U.S.) at Great Basin College in Elko. He presented an earlier version of this article at the American Historical Association’s Pacific Coast Branch’s annual conference in 2013. He is currently working on a study of the CCC’s relationship to urban areas in the intermountain West. Opening the Mountains 7 significant and varied role played by the CCC in opening Nevada’s mountain retreats to post-Depression-era recreational activity. Such a study also identifies structural and contextual causes for the distinct variety in enrollee experiences and long-term camp legacies. Examining the histories of CCC Camps F-1 and F-4, located at Nevada’s Lamoille Canyon and Mount Charleston, thus contributes to a richer understanding of the CCC’s roles in the national forests, both in operation and outcomes. That the work of CCC enrollees transformed the landscape and usage patterns of American national forests is beyond doubt. President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Tree Army,” as it was commonly called, planted some 2.3 billion trees, devoted 6.3 million man-days to fire fighting, 6.2 million man-days to fire pre-suppression projects, and treated 21 million acres of woodlands in pest and disease control operations. Further, the CCC built infrastructure within national forests that allowed for exponentially increased public usage in the decades that followed. These projects included 122,000 miles of roadways, the development of 23,700 new water sources and systems, improvements to more than 100,000 miles of hiking trails, the blazing of 28,000 miles of new hiking trails, and the construction of 50,000 new campgrounds and thousands of recreational parks, structures, and ranger stations.4 The CCC certainly contributed to opening the way for many Americans to experience the outdoor recreational opportunities of the national forests. At first glimpse, the state of Nevada seems an unlikely setting foran examination of the significance of the CCC in the national forests. The state is, after all, better known for sage brush, aridity, and vast open spaces than the forests. Similarly, the state does not seem a particularly promising location for an historical study of the CCC and the USFS’s influence on recreational behavior. Of approximately four thousand CCC camps in existence, only fifty- four were located in Nevada. Of the fifty-four, only seven were supervised by the USFS. This is in contrast to the national trend, where in the early years of the CCC’s existence, the forest service claimed more CCC camps than did any other single federal agency. In Nevada, that honor went to the Division of Grazing, which had twenty-seven camps devoted to its projects.5 Although Division of Grazing projects took center stage with the CCC in Nevada, the USFS projects and the importance of the CCC to the state’s forest lands should not be discounted. Nevada, after all, is home to the largest national forest in the United States outside of Alaska. Known today as the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, it encompasses 6.3 million discontinuous, high-elevation acres across the state.6 It is fitting that the national forest derived its name from the Humboldt Mountain Range and the Shoshone word for mountains, as large forests typically exist only in the state’s higher elevations. Nevada certainly does not suffer from a shortage of higher elevations, as indicated by the existence of more than two-hundred-thirty named mountain ranges within the state’s 8 Jonathan Foster

boundaries. This makes Nevada the country’s most mountainous state in terms of number of mountain ranges. Twenty-three of these ranges contain peaks reaching elevations higher than ten thousand feet. These mountains receive considerable snowfall each year, and offer prime winter and summer recreational activities.7 The forested mountains’ recreational potential did not escape the attention of the USFS and CCC planners. As the historian William Rowley has shown, the forest service was forced to address recreational issues as early as 1906. At that time, and for some decades thereafter, the USFS had to deal with tensions between urban sportsmen and rural ranchers over the regulation of game on forest lands. Sportsmen typically sought more game regulation to increase game herds, while ranching interests viewed the existing herds as a threat to grazing land. The USFS, at least at the local level and in practice, tended to align more with grazing interests at this time.8 By the 1930s, however, creating public access to outdoor recreational opportunities seemed to take on more importance. Building amenities for the public’s enjoyment of the national forest lands assumed a place “foremost in foresters’ minds,” and “central” to the cooperative projects of the USFS and CCC throughout the Great Depression.9 With such prospective development in the state’s abundant public lands and a small population, Nevada benefitted disproportionately from New Deal relief agencies like the CCC. With a population of 91,058 in 1930, Nevada ranked last among all states. Yet despite the facts that Nevada had fewer New Deal projects and less over-all New Deal investment within its borders than did other states, the activity that it received had a greater per-capita impact. For example, over-all New Deal investment in Nevada amounted to approximately $1,200 for each man, woman, and child in the state, with the overwhelming majority of federal expenditures coming through the Bureau of Reclamation (Hoover Dam), the Bureau of Public Roads, and the CCC. Nevada subsequently ranked first in the nation in terms of per-capita investment of New Deal funds. In other states, the over-all per-capita federal expenditure could be as little as $5 per person.10 In terms of CCC presence relative to population, Nevada eclipsed all other states. By 1937 Nevada had sixteen operational camps. This amounted to one camp per 5,591 inhabitants. Ultimately, 30,791 men worked for the CCC in Nevada. Of these 30,791 enrollees, 7,079 were native Nevadans. Thus, approximately 8 percent of Nevada’s population actively worked for the CCC during the term of its existence.11 This statistic is particularly impressive when one takes into account that enrollment in the CCC was limited for the most part to the 18-to-25 year old demographic and World War I veterans.12 The CCC affected an even greater number of Nevadans than those living in its camps and working on its projects. The placement of a CCC camp often resulted in a boom of commerce and income for nearby urban areas. Thus, town officials and politicians on all levels often lobbied tirelessly in hopes of Opening the Mountains 9 obtaining camps and keeping active those already in existence.13 Additional economic contributions to the state included increased education of Nevada enrollees obtained through CCC education programs, and the influx of cash to families of enrollees. CCC educational programs, sometimes with participation rates of more than 90 percent at the camp level, increased enrollees’ likelihood of obtaining post-CCC employment and their long-term earning potential.14 That each enrollee was required to send home $25 of their monthly $30 CCC earnings, both helped many struggling Nevadan families survive the Great Depression. The practice also infused much needed cash into faltering local economies.15 Yet the existence of such positive influences of the CCC on Nevadans depended upon more than simply the existence of the camps. Successful operation rested upon close cooperation among multiple government agencies. Nevada’s CCC camps in national forest lands illustrate that smooth and productive camp operation required an almost unprecedented degree of interagency cooperation among the CCC, the USFS, and the U.S. Army. Oftentimes, breakdowns in cooperation at the local or national level could have damaging consequences at the camp level. These included poor morale, discipline problems, loss of work productivity, and deteriorating relations with nearby communities. While typical strife and disagreements between the CCC and USFS (or its parent, the Department of Agriculture) certainly occurred, interagency cooperation seems to have been better between them than with the army. A large flare-up between the CCC and army occurred in 1937 for example, when the War Department decided on a rotation scheme that would remove and replace all CCC camp commanders who had been on duty at their camps for more than eighteen months. Even though the army had, at first, participated in the CCC experiment reluctantly, its leaders had realized the value of experience gained by reserve officers in commanding CCC camps. Therefore, a rotation schedule was approved that would give more officers the opportunity to serve as camp commanders. CCC Director Fechner bitterly opposed this decision and interceded directly with President Roosevelt to have it overturned. This opened up great antagonism with the War Department, which viewed Fechner’s actions as an attempt to dictate policy. Eventually, a compromise was reached that allowed for the army to rotate out 50 percent of its commanding officers each year. 16 As will be made evident in the examination of Camp Charleston Mountain, this decision reverberated through Nevada’s CCC camps in terms of enrollee morale, opportunity, and camp productivity. It was within this context of increasing emphasis on recreation access and amenities and strained inter-agency cooperation that Nevada’s CCC camps operated from 1933 to 1942. Two of these camps, Lamoille Canyon’s F-1 and Mount Charleston’s F-4, shared such similarities that historians of the CCC in Nevada have labeled them “counterparts” to each other.17 Both were summer-only camps devoted to USFS projects for most of their existence. Both 10 Jonathan Foster

Camp Lamoille Barracks under Construction, 1933. (Northeastern Nevada Museum Archives, Elko, Nevada)

were located in spectacular mountain settings that offered huge potential for recreational development. Each camp was also located approximately the same distance from its county’s largest urban area. Both date to the earliest period of CCC history, having been formed in May 1933, and they remained in existence for the duration of CCC’s existence.18 Yet closer inspection of each camp’s history and accomplishments suggests striking variation between the two counterpart camps. Specifically, there were apparent differences between the camps regarding scope of work, leadership quality, and camp legacies. Lamoille Canyon is located in the Ruby Mountain range of northeastern Nevada, approximately thirty miles southeast of the city of Elko. The mountain range and canyon are widely recognized as harboring some of the most spectacular scenery in the state.19 Local, regional, and national publications have often commented on the area’s world-class beauty, going so far as to apply the nickname “Nevada’s Alps.”20 This spectacular scenery was not readily accessible to tourists prior to the 1930s. Though locals knew of the area’s alpine lakes, sublime landscapes, and Opening the Mountains 11

Tents at Camp Lamoille, ca. 1933. (Northeastern Nevada Museum Archives, Elko, Nevada)

recreational potential, no roadway extended into the length of the canyon.21 Thus, as road building and recreational accessibility stood as a central concern of the USFS, Lamoille Canyon offered a prime site for large-scale forest-service projects. The CCC offered the USFS the means and manpower to accomplish such projects. Subsequently, Lamoille Canyon’s Camp F-1 became the state’s first camp devoted to forest-service projects. The enrollees’ primary job was to open the canyon via the construction of a twelve-mile road into its far reaches. Additional projects included the construction of a USFS ranger station, new campgrounds, water systems, and a network of hiking trails throughout the canyon and surrounding mountains.22 This ambitious slate of projects coincided with prevalent forest-service agendas in the 1930s. New and improved roadways and amenities were intended to serve multiple purposes that the forest service emphasized during this period. For example, the roadway would provide access to the forests for multiple tasks: the harvesting of trees, fire suppression, and recreational activities. A forest-service manual on forestry for CCC enrollees from this period stressed that the role of forestry and, by association, the USFS was to manage the forests to ensure their continued “protection of watersheds …. erosion protection …. timber production …. and game.” The manual goes on 12 Jonathan Foster

to stress another primary concern of the forest service that has emerged in recent years due to increased leisure time and the widespread acceptance of the automobile. This final concern, “which in some areas exceeds all others in importance,” was outdoor recreation.23 The CCC’s work projects in Lamoille Canyon certainly reflected this emphasis on recreational accessibility. According to the enrollee Ivan Dunlap, the main purpose of the camp’s existence was to “open up this marvelous region by building a road into the heart of the mountains.”24 CCC enrollees began working on the road “opening” Lamoille Canyon in 1933, and completed it in 1940. As the seven-year-span indicates, the road’s construction was no easy task. Enrollees used dynamite to blast the roadway’s bed into precarious high- altitude granite cliffs, and graded its surface by horse-drawn equipment. As the enrollee Edmund Rosowski recalled some years later, at Lamoille “it was either firefighting or road construction.” His job, in regard to road construction, was to deliver the explosives used to blast out the Lamoille Canyon roadway. Each day, he would drive into town, pick up a truckload of dynamite at the Elko rail depot, and then drive the dynamite back out to the Lamoille camp.25 The efforts of Rosowski and those working alongside him paid off. When completed, the dirt-and-gravel road provided scenic access for tourists who wanted to sightsee, camp at CCC-built campgrounds, explore the miles of CCC-constructed hiking trails, or pursue trout in the many alpine lakes and streams in the vicinity.26 In the decades that followed, and particularly after the designation of the canyon as a scenic area in 1965, the original road was greatly improved. The Lamoille Canyon Scenic Byway (officially designated NF-660) is now a modern two-lane asphalt road with numerous scenic overlooks; it allows tens of thousands of visitors to enter and enjoy the canyon each year.27 Projects such as the Lamoille Canyon road were the result of increased focus on recreation by forest-service officials. The basis for this increased awareness is evident from even the most cursory glance at federal land usage statistics into the 1930s. Between 1917 and 1931, the public’s visitation of national forests increased from 3,132,000 per year to 32,288,613 per year. Further, the rate of increase of national-forest visitation was itself increasing rapidly in the 1930s. By 1935, the number of visitors had jumped more than 9 million from 1931’s total, to a staggering 41,725,000 per year. This rate of visitation surpassed that of national parks, national monuments, and other federal recreational lands combined in 1935.28 It is not surprising that forest-service projects carried out by the CCC were often aimed at “improving recreation and scenic values, as well as increasing the utility of the forest as a producer of wood.”29 Recreation-oriented work projects at Camp Lamoille were, by no means, the only projects on which enrollees toiled. For example, the fighting of forest fires consumed much energy and time, as did activities aimed at thepre- suppression of fire. The enrollees at Lamoille and other CCC camps performed admirably in the execution of such duties. Often, this required the enrollees to Opening the Mountains 13 risk their lives in attempts to contain wildfires across Nevada and the West. This could end in tragic results, as was the case when five enrollees from the Camp Paradise Valley (Lamoille’s wintering camp), lost their lives battling a fire on June 28, 1939.30 As one might guess, this tragedy greatly affected the camp. As Edna Timmons, the wife of Camp Paradise supervisor Tim Timmons, later recalled, “that was real bad …. that was the most terrible thing.”31 Yet, such occurrences, though tragic, were the exception. Firefighting was one of the CCC’s most successful endeavors in the national forests. Thanks to the work of the CCC, national forest acreage destroyed by fire decreased to its lowest levels on record between 1933 and 1942.32 Beyond fire suppression, CCC enrollees also devoted much time to cattle- guard construction, fence building and mending, reservoir impounding, and fighting the hordes of “Mormon Crickets” that invaded the surrounding area each summer.33 The cricket populations were so heavy in summer that enrollees used metal sheets to build diversion funnels to concentrate the insects into a pile. Once the cricket piles reached heights of approximately three feet, the enrollees would douse the piles with gasoline and light them on fire.34 Still, beyond burning crickets, the camp’s main objective remained the opening of the area to greater access. According to the CCC camp inspector M. J. Bowen, the enrollees at Lamoille Canyon performed “some really fine work” in this regard.35 As in Lamoille Canyon, the enrollees who inhabited Camp Charleston Mountain in southern Nevada’s Kyle Canyon also worked on forest-service projects primarily aimed at improving recreational access and amenities. Like Lamoille Canyon, Kyle Canyon’s natural beauty often led to comparisons with famous spectacular environments. In this case, the area around Mount Charleston was at times referred to as a “Yosemite in the Sagebrush.”36 Unlike Lamoille Canyon, Kyle Canyon and the Mount Charleston area were heavily used for recreational purposes well before the CCC’s arrival. In 1915, the early Las Vegas entrepreneur and politician E. W. Griffith purchased some eighty acres around Kyle Springs in an area historically used as a source for lumber and as a hideout for horse thieves. Griffith, attuned to the recreational needs of nearby Las Vegas, immediately began the construction of what was known as Charleston Park on Mount Charleston, as well as improving the rudimentary road connecting his new resort with the main Tonopah Highway. Although the road was difficult to travel, and the thirty-five-mile trip from Las Vegas took three or four hours to complete, many Las Vegans made use of it each year. The cool high-elevation forests of Mount Charleston (typically thirty degrees or so cooler than the Las Vegas Valley) was a tempting respite for those needing relief from the desert heat.37 By the late 1920s, the recreational value that locals placed upon the Mount Charleston area was made apparent by heavy visitation of the site. Summer weekends in 1927 often found every available room and cabin at Griffith’s resort occupied, with applications being accepted for waiting lists.38 The following year, a keen public interest in Mount Charleston recreation was 14 Jonathan Foster

Camp Mount Charleston, June 1940. (Gerald W. Williams Collection, Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center)

shown by vocal public outcry and legal proceedings against Griffith in relation to mountain access. Griffith, it seems, had installed a gate across what by then had become known as Charleston Road in an attempt to control entrance into the area. Despite Griffith’s claims that he had built the road across his private property, the Las Vegas district attorney soon ordered him to remove the gate and reopen access to county road workers and visitors to Mount Charleston.39 Thus, by the late May and early June 1933 arrival of the CCC enrollees at Camp Charleston Mountain, the area was already widely known, heavily used, and vehemently claimed by the public as a recreational outlet for neighboring Las Vegas. Yet the area sorely lacked adequate amenities for the growing urban population nearby.40 The forest service’s projects for the CCC in Kyle Canyon reflected this context, by focusing on improving existing access and facilities, and constructing new recreational amenities. These included an impressive winter park with ice skating, ski slopes, and ski jumps, an amphitheater, numerous trails, road construction and improvements, and water pipeline systems for inhabitants.41 Opening the Mountains 15

As with Lamoille Canyon, work projects advanced at a steady rate on Mount Charleston. From 1933 onward, crews of enrollees were busy developing new skiing sites, picnic areas, trails, parking lots; stringing telephone cables; installing water pipes, and improving public campgrounds. The crews also devoted time to fire suppression and pre-suppression projects. Beyond the construction of the winter park, which was to contain two ski jumps, ski slides, ice-skating pond, and a toboggan slide, the main project appears to have been the construction of a three-mile-long roadway to the mountain summit. In contrast to Lamoille, the CCC enrollees on Mount Charleston were also tasked with the unenviable duty of patrolling and cleaning campgrounds and also maintaining signage for the thousands of recreationalists who visited the area each weekend. At times, this placed a significant strain on the CCC enrollees, who already suffered from low morale at Camp Charleston Mountain.42 Enrollee morale became an issue at both Camp Lamoille and Camp Charleston Mountain. In both instances, camp morale started strong but wavered as time drew on. While the fluctuations in morale were significant in each instance, enrollees at Mount Charleston exhibited the greatest drop in morale over the course of their camp’s existence. Morale at Mount Charleston seems to have declined rapidly following 1938. Prior to 1939, existing records indicate no evidence of significant discontent. Camp inspection and educational reports for 1936 describe an active, orderly camp inhabited by enrollees of “high spirits and morale.” The camp offered ample recreational and educational activities for the young men, and seemingly benefited from strong leadership and good cooperation among the army, forest service, and CCC officials.43 Similarily, inspection reports from 1937 and 1938 praised camp leadership, conditions, and agency cooperation, and ranked morale as “excellent” and “splendid.” In a supplemental narrative to 1938’s report, camp inspector Bowen went so far as to characterize Camp Mount Charleston as “the best summer camp I recall visiting in some time.”44 By the summer of 1939, however, the camp’s morale had plummeted. That year, CCC camp inspector A. W. Stockman wrote of a setting unrecognizable when compared with the inspections of the previous year. Stockman’s scathing reports described a disorganized camp that ranked poorly in everything from sanitation to recreational equipment. Predictably, Stockman also rated the camp’s morale as poor. A telling statistic regarding enrollees’ attitudes could be found in the nine discharges for desertion that year as compared to zero for the previous year. Stockman concluded by opining that the camp, “as a whole” was “most unsatisfactory” and in need of “drastic and concentrated attention.”45 The source of the morale collapse at Camp Charleston Mountain resides in the camp’s lack of stable leadership from winter 1938 through summer 1939. As Stockman reported, the company stationed at the camp had, after a long period of commendable army leadership, operated under five different commanders during this period. Four of these changes had taken place since April 1939. 16 Jonathan Foster

Further, a new company of enrollees were combined with the existing company in May 1939.46 This, along with instability and dereliction in leadership, likely served to fracture company cohesion and morale. It is of interest that the turnover in the camp’s army leadership coincides with the previously discussed decision by the War Department to rotate camp commanders. In the wake of Stockman’s report CCC Director Robert Fechner’s office took action. In a tersely worded memorandum to the adjutant general of the War Department, Assistant to the Director Charles Kenlan conveyed Fechner’s wish that the War Department investigate and take immediate action regarding the “extraordinary” and “far from satisfactory” conditions at the camp.47 Army investigations found failures in “adequacy of command, administration, and camp facilities.” These issues, the report went on to explain, were being addressed by new officers who had been placed in charge of camp administration.48 However addressed, the army’s actions failed to rectify the problems at Mount Charleston. The slide in both camp morale and conditions continued through 1942. That year, CCC inspector M. J. Bowen issued what surely must have been the most critical inspection report of his career. Bowen found few things in the camp that met CCC standards. His report described trashed facilities, mess halls and kitchens swarming with flies, lack of refrigeration, lack of educational materials, missing or worn out recreational equipment, broken windows, and very poor administration. As for the enrollees, Bowen reported that they suffered from poor morale and appeared generally “untidy, slack, and unkempt.” These enrollees and their work, Bowen concluded, “were not up to the general average.”49 Again, further investigation found that the source of the camp’s terrible morale and conditions resided with substandard army leadership at the camp level. In this instance, a Captain William J. Irwin had been placed in charge of CCC company 1530 stationed at Logandale, Nevada, in late 1941. In the spring of 1942, the company relocated to Mount Charleston, where it would spend the summer working on USFS projects. Irwin turned out to be completely incompetent as camp commander. Soon, camp conditions and morale sank to even greater depths than observed in 1939. Work on forest-service projects also suffered, as evidenced by numerous complaints from USFS supervisors throughout the spring and summer of 1942.50 Investigations into camp conditions suggested a shocking dereliction of duty on the part of Captain Irwin. Those interviewed, including subordinate officers, related alarming levels of “inefficiency and various forms of misconduct” on Irwin’s part. For example, Captain Irwin seems to have seldom slept in camp, having chosen instead to live primarily in Las Vegas. Even when in camp during the day, he often appeared to be intoxicated. On the rare occasions that he stayed in camp overnight, he preferred to be accompanied by female companions. Reports indicated that Captain Irwin provided transportation for his female companions, who were also characterized as frequently intoxicated, with CCC and USFS trucks.51 Opening the Mountains 17

Beyond Irwin’s substandard leadership, the decline of Camp Mount Charleston resembles a national trend of dwindling morale and camp deterioration that occurred during the CCC’s final two years. At this time, several contextual events worked against the CCC’s ability to live up to its previous standards. International events had helped shift government emphasis away from economic relief and recovery to war preparation, the CCC had been denied the status of permanent agency by Congress, and the longtime CCC director Robert Fechner, passed away.52 As a result, CCC camps and enrollee morale declined. Though this wider context undoubtedly contributed to the problems on Mount Charleston, Bowen’s reports indicate that this camp had deteriorated at a much faster rate and to a greater degree than others he inspected. His strong emphasis on Irwin suggests that instability of command and poor leadership served as the greatest contributor to the unsatisfactory state of affairs at the camp. This too could be related to the wider context of the crisis of war, which required the skills of more capable officers in more pressing duties. Even Irwin was called up from the reserves and commissioned in the regular army in 1942.53 Regarding Camp Lamoille, indications are also present of strong morale early on, and then periods of declining morale beginning in the late 1930s. In contrast with Mount Charleston, this seems to be indicative of the changing characteristics of enrollees rather than turnover in leadership. While local Nevadans were among the initial enrollees at Camp Lamoille, their numbers were not sufficient to fill requirements initially, and even less so over time. Ultimately, the majority of enrollees at Lamoille Canyon were from other parts of the United States. Whereas, in the early years many enrollees at Camp Lamoille came from rural areas of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, in later years New York City and New Jersey supplied more of the enrollees in the camps.54 Early on, Lamoille Canyon’s remote location and stunning scenery served as a source of pride for many enrollees. Enrollees tended to enjoy the setting tremendously as evidenced by a submission to the CCC’s newspaper Happy Days in 1934. Titled “Ruby Hunters Cut Way in ‘Alps,’” a submission to Happy Days by enrollee Ivan Dunlap, it praised the location as “not unlike that of the Alps.”55 Others indicated their comfort and a sense of mischief through their interactions with the wild setting. On one such occasion, enrollee Frenchie La Vitte was surprised to find an unwelcome visitor under his bunk on a spring morning in 1934. Much to everyone’s surprise, a rattlesnake had taken refuge there during the night. This did not faze La Vitte, who, to the cheering of his bunkmates, proceeded to pick the snake up and display it for the others to see, and even placed the venomous reptile’s head in his own mouth at one point. 56 Although extraordinarily foolhardy, it shows that even this unwelcome event was turned into a raucous display of fun and camaraderie by the enrollees, indicating a degree of happiness and comfort with the wild on their part. 18 Jonathan Foster

Recreational Activity at Camp Lamoille, 1933. (Northeastern Nevada Museum Archives, Elko, Nevada)

During this period, from 1934 through 1936, no evidence indicates poor discipline or morale in the Lamoille Canyon camp. In contrast, surviving inspection reports can be characterized as glowing. CCC Camp Inspector Bowen, for example, described the camp’s over-all morale in 1935 as “splendid.”57 Paul Murdoch, the camp’s educational advisor, characterized the enrollees as a “very choice group of boys to work with.” Murdoch went on to describe the Lamoille enrollees as motivated and interested in learning as evidenced by an approximately 90 percent participation rate in educational offerings.58 Yet this level of happiness was not to be permanent. By the late 1930s, problems with camp morale began to appear. This coincided with a shift in the origins of enrollees serving in Lamoille Canyon in 1937. For that year, the Division of Grazing took over supervision of the Lamoille Camp and replaced the previous company with a group of enrollees hailing primarily from New York City and New Jersey.59 It is likely that the previous groups of enrollees, having arrived primarily from rural areas, were more comfortable with the isolated setting and had experienced some previous introduction to outdoor labor. Camp inspection reports from this period suggest that did not seem to be the case with the more urbanized New Yorkers who arrived in 1937. These reports clearly reveal a greater degree of dissatisfaction on the part both of the newly arrived enrollees and their camp commander.60 Opening the Mountains 19

In 1937, camp commanding officer John De Long reported to CCC special investigator M. J. Bowen that this group was “the poorest lot of boys he had handled” in his three years in the CCC. In his opinion, about half of the enrollees were unfit for service. He asserted that many of the enrollees refused to work, complained frequently, and suffered from exceedingly low morale. In fact, nineteen of the company’s approximately one-hundred-fifty enrollees received dishonorable discharges for refusal to work in the three months preceding inspector Bowen’s visit.61 Those associated with the camp also seem to have held a somewhat low opinion of the New York enrollees and their fit with the surroundings early on. Camp supervisor Tim Timmons’s wife, Edna, later recalled that the New Yorkers “didn’t have anything …. when they left, they talked like human beings. When they arrived it was just a lot of gibberish. It was just like letting out a herd of monkeys.”62 Inspector Bowen acknowledged that the life experiences of many of the boys had not adequately prepared them for the rural, rugged surroundings. At the same time, he also outlined contributing issues stemming from the commanding officer’s actions. De Long, for example, had discontinued weekly Sunday trips into Elko for enrollees to attend worship services. His reasoning for this was that enrollees sometimes did not actually attend the services. This reduction in town visitation increased the enrollees’ sense of isolation and severely dampened company morale. It needed, according to Bowen, to be immediately rectified. Poor food also seems to have contributed tolow morale. The company, as Bowen states, had frequent turnover in mess officers, which contributed to substandard food quality. Most enrollees interviewed by Bowen stressed isolation, the lack of Sunday trips to town, and poor food quality as the sources of their disgruntlement.63 When confronted with the rural, isolated setting and strict discipline of the CCC camp, these young men experienced a degree of shock and tended to be less willing to cooperate. For the first time at Camp Lamoille, discipline problems and refusals to work ensued. On one such occasion, several enrollees engaged in a disturbance in the camp’s mess hall that resulted in a “riot call” to the Elko Police Department. Three enrollees, Anthony Ambrosio, John Cotton, and Pat Guazzo were subsequently arrested for causing the disturbance. Eventually, Guazzo confessed to having created the disturbance in hopes of gaining a discharge from the CCC and being allowed to return to New York City.64 In spite of these periods of substandard leadership and declining morale, the CCC camps at Mount Charleston and Lamoille Canyon accomplished their objectives. CCC work on USFS projects in both camps made each area more accessible for recreational use. At present, hundreds of thousands of recreationalists visit the two mountain canyons each year. Whether hiking, camping, skiing, or sightseeing, their recreational activities are possible because of the CCC enrollees who worked on USFS projects three quarters of a century ago. 20 Jonathan Foster

This legacy certainly fits within the wider national legacy of the CCC concerning tourism and recreation. The CCC and forest service proved to be tremendously cooperative in their emphasis on increasing accessibility and recreation on public lands. The resultant process that one historian has labeled as the “packaging the natural world as recreational resource” contributed to a pattern of road building and construction in national parks and national forests that only intensified in the ensuing years. Road mileage in national forests, for example, doubled from 80,000 miles in 1940 to 160,000 miles in 1960.65 The legacy of such accessibility-centered policies has been controversial. Even during the CCC’s active years, many influential environmentalists and conservationists spoke out against the trend of opening wild areas to recreational development and activity. By the mid 1930s, wilderness activists such as Bob Marshall argued that CCC projects destroyed primitive wild areas in national forests and thus reduced the over-all worth of the forests. Similarly, the voice of Benton MacKaye, who had at one time worked for the CCC, criticized the corps’ road-building projects as destroying wilderness and the all-important solitude that it creates. Others, Aldo Leopold among them, vocally challenged CCC and forest-service projects in the 1930s for not placing adequate emphasis on forest ecology. Concerns such as those of Marshall, Leopold, and MacKaye directly contributed to an increased awareness of the need to preserve wilderness. 66 Thus, on a broad level, the CCC contributed both to the opening of wilderness and the increased awareness of the need to preserve wilderness. The historian Neil Maher has argued that, in this regard, the CCC played a central role in the transformation of specialist-based Progressive Era conservation into post-World War II grass roots environmentalism.67 As intellectuals and academics continue to debate the propriety of increased public access to wild areas, recreationalists go on enjoying the physical legacies of CCC work in record numbers. In both Lamoille Canyon and Mount Charleston, the CCC and USFS certainly helped this process along by packaging nature as an available “recreational resource” for Nevadans. Yet, the extent of increased recreational pressure has varied greatly between the two locations. Even though Lamoille Canyon remains a popular escape for locals, its development and visitation rates pale in comparison to those at Mount Charleston.68 At Mount Charleston today, in many ways, one can find the worst dreams of wilderness proponents recognized. Each year approximately 1.2 million people visit the Spring Mountain National Recreation area, of which Mount Charleston is the main attraction. An additional 1,200 people reside in permanent homes built on and around the mountain in the 1960s. Along with CCC’s ski slopes, campgrounds, trails, and roads, one finds houses, schools, and lodges. 69 Surrounded by forest growth in an arid region, this built environment has placed both property and lives at risk. In the summer of 2013, for example, residents of this mountain getaway faced the destructive Opening the Mountains 21 force of wildfire. The largest local fire in recent history resulted in the forced evacuation of the Kyle Canyon area and the exertion of tremendous amounts of manpower and money to save the dwellings and recreational infrastructure from incineration.70 In Lamoille Canyon permanent houses number in the tens rather than hundreds. Today, the road first blazed by the CCC provides access for thousands instead of millions of visitors in automobiles each year. During their visits they might overnight at the Thomas Canyon Campground, or park at the end of the twelve-mile-long Lamoille Canyon Road and spend an hour or a week exploring the numerous hiking trails that radiate through the spectacular mountain setting, all of which were developed by CCC enrollees. They will not, however, find ski slopes, mountain lodges, restaurants, or other modern development. In this regard, the locations of the twin camps no longer resemble each other.71 The reasons for the divergent paths of Lamoille Canyon and Mount Charleston are numerous. Most obviously, one can look to the post-World War II population growth of southern Nevada relative to that in northern Nevada. In 1930, three years before the creation of the CCC, both Elko and Clark counties (the counties in which the camps were located) were similar in population. That year, Elko County’s population stood at 9,960, and 8,532 people resided in Clark County. As for the counties’ primary cities, which includes also the urban areas closest to the respective canyons, populations stood at 5,165 for Las Vegas and 3,217 for Elko. In the decade of the 1930s, Clark County and Las Vegas began to experience rapid population growth as the result of the Boulder Dam project and increased local emphasis on gaming and tourism in Las Vegas. By 1940, the population of Clark County had doubled to 16,414, while the geographically larger Elko County saw its population increase by fewer than 1,000 to only 10,912 residents. This pattern continued throughout the ensuing decades, and grew even more pronounced in the second half of the twentieth century. Today, just over 2 million of Nevada’s total 2.7 million people live in Clark County, compared to approximately 52,000 in Elko County.72 Further, it is somewhat likely that a few of the approximately 40 million yearly visitors to the Las Vegas area also visit the Mount Charleston area.73 Still, the areas’ widely divergent demographic patterns do not fully explain the varying legacies of the two CCC projects. Historical context beyond urban growth has also influenced post-CCC usage of the areas. For example, the two CCC camps’ work projects differed significantly, even if both fell under the guidance of the USFS and were aimed at increasing accessibility and recreational amenities. The CCC and USFS developed far greater recreational infrastructure at Camp Charleston Mountain than at Camp Lamoille. Whereas CCC enrollees at Camp Lamoille spent the majority of their time blazing a dangerous and time-consuming twelve-mile mountain road, such access to Mount Charleston already existed. This made it possible for the forest service to devote enrollee time to other, more varied and recreationally attractive 22 Jonathan Foster

projects. Further, a more established pattern of recreational activity existed at Mount Charleston prior to the CCC’s arrival. Although this tasked CCC enrollees with the additional burden of catering to and cleaning up after thousands of recreationalists each weekend, the established pattern of day-use recreation combined with growing populations to ensure heavy usage in the post-CCC period. This was not the case in Lamoille, where the development of significant pre-CCC recreational use was limited by lack of access into the canyon. Even when completed, that access took the form of a one-lane, treacherous gravel roadway. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s, according to the local resident and historian Edna Patterson, that the completion of a widening and surfacing project truly “opened” the “scenic grandeur” of Lamoille Canyon “to the masses.”74 Finally, even the context of climate contributed to the extreme popularity of Mount Charleston relative to Lamoille Canyon. Las Vegas is much hotter than Elko in the summer, and lacks the long and severely cold winters found in the higher elevation of Elko County. In addition to recreation, Las Vegans have long utilized Mount Charleston as an escape from the oppressive heat of summer. In contrast, northern Nevada summers are brief and viewed by many as a welcome respite from winter’s extremes.75 Since World War II, attempts have been made to significantly expand recreational amenities in Lamoille Canyon. For example, in 1977 Joe Royer, a ski-patroller, opened one of the West’s few helicopter-based skiing services. Catering to wealthy adventure seekers, Royer’s business remains profitable. A “heli-skiing” trip, as it is popularly known, presently costs $4,400 per person for a three-day excursion. For that sum, skiers receive room and board at Royer’s Red’s Ranch, and six heli-skiing runs. On these runs, skiers experience the rush of being dropped off on otherwise inaccessible mountain peaks and the extreme skiing that follows.76 Because it is such a dangerous and prohibitively expensive sport, Ruby Mountain heli-skiing remains far less common than skiing the slopes of Mount Charleston. As indicated by the experiences and legacies of the camps at Lamoille Canyon and Mount Charleston during the 1930s, the CCC’s presence in Nevada’s national forests was historically significant and varied. In both locations, the CCC made great strides in opening national forest lands to public recreational use. This was possible because the USFS emphasized recreational development alongside conservation on Nevada’s national forest lands. Yet variation also defined the CCC experience and its legacy in Nevada’s national forests. From this comparison of the histories of two seemingly similar camps, the importance of variations in the camps’ local context, enrollee origin, and quality of leadership becomes apparent. Also, the camps’ differing legacies indicate the influence of local historical context on the long-term impact of CCC projects. Comparative examinations of such camps thus illustrate the limitations of simple generalizations concerning the CCC’s rich history and influence in Nevada. Opening the Mountains 23

Notes

1The popularity of the CCC is an oft repeated mantra in discussions of the New Deal. Textbooks for United States history survey courses as well as monographs typically recite the popularity and success of the CCC. James Roark’s popular textbook, The American Promise: A History of the United States, Vol. 2., ed. 5 (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012), 725, refers to the CCC as “the most popular relief program.” Similarily, monographic treatments of the CCC such as John A. Salmond, The Civil- ian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942: A New Deal Case Study (Durham: Duke University Press, 1967) characterizes the CCC as a “successful experiment” with “immediate” and “obvious” benefits that made the CCC “one of the most popular” and “most successful …. of all New Deal measures.” 2Edwin G. Hill, In the Shadow of the Mountain: The Spirit of the CCC (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1990), 138-39. 3The USFS officially adopted the motto “Caring for the Land and Serving the People” in 1985. See Lou Romero, “‘Caring for the Land and Serving the People’: The Origins of the U.S. Forest Service Motto,” Forest History Today, 18 (Fall 2012), 35-39. Its actions, however, as evidenced by the emphasis placed on developing access, recreational infrastructure, and managing forests during the 1930s with CCC labor, have long reflected such a philosophy. 4U.S. Census Bureau, “Resident Population of Nevada,” http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/ resapport/states/nevada.pdf; Hill, In the Shadow of the Mountain, 138-39; Neil M. Maher, Nature’s New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 72. 5Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, “Civilian Conservation Corps in Northeastern Nevada,” Report no. BLM-WN-GI-92-014-8100. Folder: CCC, Northeastern Nevada Museum Archives, Elko; Richa Wilson, “Privies, Pastures, and Portables: Administrative Facili- ties of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, 1891-1950,” Forest Service Report no. TY-01-1370 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2001), 56. 6“About the Forest,” http://www.fs.usda.gov/main/htnf/about-forest. 7Ibid.; James Hulse, The Silver State: Nevada’s Heritage Reinterpreted (Reno and Las Vegas: Uni- versity of Nevada Press, 2004), 3. 8William Rowley, U.S. Forest Service Grazing and Rangelands: A History (College Station: Texas A&M University, 1985), 77-78, 165-66. 9Renée Corona Kolvet and Victoria Ford, The Civilian Conservation Corps in Nevada: From Boys to Men (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2006), 120. 10Ibid., 18. 11Ibid., 2-3, 150. 12Salmond, Civilian Conservation Corps, 30. 13Kolvet and Ford, Civilian Conservation Corps in Nevada, 39; A few examples of local concern over the continuation of camps can be found in “Pep Rally Speakers Predict Best Fair Ever; Resolu- tion Favors Keeping CCC Camp,” Elko Daily Free Press (15 August 1935); “All CCC Camps in Clark County to be Maintained,” Elko Daily Free Press (3 October 1933); “The Future of the Forest Army,” Elko Daily Free Press (16 September 1933); “Lamoille Camp Is to be Moved South for Winter,” Elko Daily Free Press (6 October 1933). 14Paul B. Murdoch to M.J. Bowen, “Educational and Recreational Activities in Our Camp” (27 August 1936), Records of the Civilian Conservation Corps, RG-35-3-4, Records of the Division of Investigations, Camp Inspection Reports, Folder: Nevada, F-1 (Lamoille), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (Hereafter: NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4). 15Salmond, Civilian Conservation Corps, 30; “Army Ready to Pick Forest Service Jobs,” New York Times (8 April 1933). This article mentions the requirement that enrollees must send $22 to $25 of their monthly pay home to support their families. 16Salmond, Civilian Conservation Corps, 172. 17Kolvet and Ford, Civilian Conservation Corps in Nevada,126. 18Wilson, “Privies, Pastures, and Portables, 55; Salmond, Civilian Conservation Corps, 26; Kolvet and Ford, Civilian Conservation Corps in Nevada, 155-62. 19Edna B. Patterson, “Lamoille,” Northeastern Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, no. 3 (2001): 101-103. 20Ivan Dunlap, “Ruby Hunters Cut Way in ‘Alps,’” Happy Days (22 September 1934). 24 Jonathan Foster

21“Lamoille Road to be Constructed to Plateau this Year,” Elko Daily Free Press (31 May 1933); “Road Work in Canyon by Lamoille Workers,” Elko Daily Free Press (19 June 1933); “Lamoille Roadwork Is Speeded,” Elko Daily Free Press (3 August 1933). 22M.J. Bowen. “Camp Inspection Report,” 26 August 1936, NARA, Records of the Civilian Conservation Corps, RG-35-3-4; NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Ne- vada, F-1 (Lamoille). 23H. R. Kylie, G. H. Hieronymus, and A. G. Hall, CCC Forestry (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1937), 2-3. 24Dunlap, “Ruby Hunters.” 25Edmund Rosowski, interview by Dan Bennett, Victoria Ford, and Renée Kovet, “The Civil- ian Conservation Corps in Nevada,” University of Nevada Oral History Program, University of Nevada Special Collections and University Archives, Reno, 30 September 2000. 26Works Progress Administration, Nevada: A Guide to the Silver State (Portland: Binfords and Mort, 1940), 160-61. 27Edna B. Patterson, Nevada’s Northeast Frontier (Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1991), 470. 28Kylie, Hieronymus, and Hall, CCC Forestry, 279. 29Ibid., 280. 30“4 Youths Die in Flaming Woods,” New York Times (30 July 1939); “Vitale’s Body Found in Nevada,” New York Times (31 July 1939). 31Edna Timmons, interview by Dan Bennett, Victoria Ford, and Renee Kovet, “The Civilian Conservation Corps in Nevada,” University of Nevada Oral History Program, University of Nevada Special Collections and University Archives, Reno, 2000. 32Kolvet and Ford, Civilian Conservation Corps in Nevada, 147-51. 33“War Continues Against Crickets; Millions Take Place of Dead,” Elko Daily Free Press (22 July 1935); “CCC Holds Nevada Front Against Army of Mormon Crickets,” Happy Days (20 June 1936). 34Rosowski, interview. 35M. J. Bowen to Robert Fechner, “Cover Letter for Camp Report,” 27 August 1936, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-1 (Lamoille). 36Philip Johnston, “Called a Yosemite in the Sagebrush,” Touring Topics Magazine (2 May 1919). 37Delphine Squires, “Early Vegans Find Summer Relief Amid Charleston’s Pines,” (publication information unknown), Richard “Dick” Taylor Papers, MS 94-30, Box 6, Folder: “History,” Special Collections, UNLV Libraries, Las Vegas, Nevada (Hereafter: Taylor Papers, UNLV Spec. Col.); “Lumber Camp: Building Mill in Charleston Mountains,” Las Vegas Age (23 June 1906); “Charleston Park Resort Opens Saturday, June 3,” Las Vegas Age (2 March 1922). 38Untitled newspaper article beginning “Senator E.W. Griffith, Owner of the Resort at Charleston Park,” publication information unknown, (Taylor Papers, UNLV Spec. Col., Box 6, Folder: “History”). 39“Kyle Canyon Road Argument Renewed: Griffith Makes Another Attack,”Las Vegas Age (30 August 1928); “Board Orders Fence Removed,” Las Vegas Age (21 June 1928); “Screed Is Own Best Evidence,” Las Vegas Age (date unknown), (Taylor Papers, UNLV Spec. Col., Box 6, Folder: “History”). 40Squires, “Early Vegans” Taylor Papers, UNLV Spec. Col., Box 6, Folder: “History”). 41M.J. Bowen to Robert Fechner, “Cover Letter for Camp Inspection Report,” 30 July 1937, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 42Ibid.; M. J. Bowen, “Camp Inspection Report for Camp Mt. Charleston,” 30 July 1937, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas); Joe Griswold, “Active Work Projects: Camp F-4,” 26 September 1938, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4. Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 43M. J. Bowen, “Camp Inspection Report for Camp F-4, Mt. Charleston, Nevada,” 17 September 1936, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-1 (Las Vegas); Education Assistant Advisor to M. J. Bowen, 29 July 1937, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 44M. J. Bowen to Robert Fechner, “Cover Letter for Camp Inspection Report,” 30 July 1937, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas); M. J Bowen, “Camp Inspection Report for Camp Mt. Charleston,” 30 July 1937, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas); M. J. Bowen, “Camp Inspection Report for Camp Mt. Charleston,” 26 September 1938, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Opening the Mountains 25

Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas); M. J. Bowen, “Supplemental Report on Camp Mt. Charleston,” 26 September 1938, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 45A.W. Stockman, “Camp Inspection Report for Camp Mt. Charleston,” 14 August 1939, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 46Ibid. 47Charles H. Kenlan to Adjutant General, War Department, 21 September 1939, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas); “Report-War Department- Los Angeles District CCC to Commanding General, 9th Corps Area,” 11 October 1939, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 48“Report-War Department-Los Angeles District CCC to Commanding General, 9th Corps Area,” 11 October 1939, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 49M. J. Bowen, “Camp Inspection Report for Camp Mt. Charleston,” 10 August 1942, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 50M. J. Bowen, “Memorandum to Director, Civilian Conservation Corps,” 1942, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 51Ibid. 52Salmond, Civilian Conservation Corps, 181-99. 53Bowen, “Memorandum to Director,” 1942, NARA. 54M. J. Bowen. “Camp Inspection Report,” 26 August 1936; M. J. Bowen to Robert Fechner, “Cover Letter for Camp Inspection Report,” NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-4 (Las Vegas). 55Dunlap, “Ruby Hunters.” 56“In-and-Around the Forest Camp at Lamoille,” Elko Daily Free Press (27 June 1933). 57M. J. Bowen to Robert Fechner, “Cover Letter for Camp Report, 27 August 1936, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-1 (Lamoille). 58Paul B. Murdoch, Educational Advisor to M. J. Bowen, Special Investigator, “Educational and Recreational Activities in Our Camp,” 27 August 1936, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-1 (Lamoille). 59M. J. Bowen to Robert Fechner, “Cover Letter,” 27 August 1936, NARA, CCC Camp Inspec- tion Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-1 (Lamoille). 60M. J. Bowen. “Camp Inspection Report,” 26 August 1936, NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, F-1 (Lamoille). 61M. J. Bowen to Robert Fechner, “Cover Letter for Camp Inspection Report,” NARA, CCC Camp Inspection Records, RG-35-3-4, Folder: Nevada, DG-64. 62Timmons, interview. 63Ibid. 64“Police Called to CCC Camp,” Elko Daily Free Press (28 June 1937). 65Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 242-43. 66Neil M. Maher, Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 8-9. 67Ibid., 10-12. 68“USDA Forest Service: Spring Mountain National Recreation Area, by the Numbers,” http:// www.fs.usda.gov/detail/htnf/about-forest/offices/?cid=stelprdb5420936. 69Tovin Lapan, “45 Minutes and a World Away: Mount Charleston Residents Relish Life in a High-Altitude Oasis,” Las Vegas Review Journal (7 April 2012). 70Colton Lochhead, Rochel Goldblatt, and Steven Slivka, “25,000 Acre Fire in Backyard of Re- sort on Mount Charleston,” Las Vegas Review Journal (11 July 2013); Laura Carroll, “Lodge, Resort at Mount Charleston Prepare to Reopen,” Las Vegas Review Journal (18 July 2013). 71Description based on author’s visits to site. 72U.S. Bureau of Census, “State and County Quickfacts: Clark County, Nevada,” http:// quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/32/32003.html; U.S. Bureau of Census, “State and County Quickfacts: Elko County,” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/32/32007.html; Richard L. Forstall, “Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990,” Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington , D.C., 1995 (available at http://www.census.gov/population/ cencounts/nv190090.txt). 26 Jonathan Foster

73Velotta, Richard N. “Tourism Agency Not Concerned About Dip in 2013, Optimistic About 2014,” Las Vegas Sun (11 February 2014); Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, “2013 Las Vegas Year-to-Date Executive Summary” (available at http://www.lvcva.com/includes/content/ images/media/docs/ES-YTD-2013.pdf). Some 39.7 million people visited Las Vegas in 2013. 74Edna B. Patterson, “Lamoille,” Northeastern Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 121. 75Observations based on author’s experiences living in Elko and Las Vegas over the past ten years. 76“Ruby Mountains Heli-Experience: Our Story,” https://www.helicopterskiing.com/about/ our-story (accessed 5 November 2015); Scott Willoughby, “Nevada’s Ruby Mountains a Heli-Skiing Paradise,” The Denver Post (5 January 2010); “The Untracked Line: Ruby Mtn. Heli, NV,” Skiing (December 2004), 64. Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington

Kyhl Lyndgaard

Sarah Winnemucca has never been a more popular and unifying figure than at the present, and yet continues to be maligned and discredited by tribal members as well as by some whites. In 2005, a memorial statue from the state of Nevada depicting Winnemucca was completed and enshrined in the National Statuary Hall. Understanding the origins of these divided memories and un- covering the messages encoded in the statue’s genesis can help avoid relegat- ing Winnemucca to a false and static mythology that may eventually render her to obscurity once again. The study of how Winnemucca’s own literary and activist accomplishments continue to shape her legacy is inseparable from an evaluation and understanding of the impetus behind the statue’s dedication. On March 9, 2005, a group of politicians spoke at the dedication ceremony of a statue depicting Sarah Winnemucca at the United States Capitol. House leader Nancy Pelosi explained why Congress had initiated the tradition of allowing each state to submit two statues at the end of the Civil War, thus creating the National Statuary Hall. “Congress recognized that even at a time of such division, there was more that united us as a nation than what had divided us. Sarah Winnemucca recognized that too.”1 In a time of great partisanship and deep

Kyhl Lyndgaard earned his Ph.D. in the Literature & Environment program at the University of Nevada, Reno. He recently returned to his alma mater, College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, where he serves as director of the First Year Seminar program and the Writing Center. His publications include the 2015 co-edited anthology, Currents of the Universal Being: Explorations in the Literature of Energy, as well as articles in such journals as ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Great Plains Quarterly, and Green Praxis & Theory. 28 Kyhl Lyndgaard

Sarah Winnemucca Bronze by Benjamin Victor, in the Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall, United States Capitol. Photograph by Architect of the Capitol. Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington 29 divisions over the war on terror, immigration, and other domestic and foreign crises, the dedication ceremony for Nevada’s second memorial statue had all the appearances of unity. Speeches about Winnemucca were delivered by many prominent politicians, including Democrats Pelosi and Harry Reid, as well as Republicans such as Dennis Hastert, Bill Frist, Kenny Guinn, and the M.C. of the event, Jim Gibbons. The statue represents more than a nationally sanctioned hero, however. The ninety-ninth statue to be dedicated, Winnemucca’s likeness is a fascinating site that reflects the conflicted and protean nature of memorial- izing our American heritage. The statue is the culmination of a fractious series of choices, memories, and struggles over the past one hundred and fifty years. When the moment came for the unveiling, four dignitaries pulled at the strings of the maroon covering, but Sarah Winnemucca did not appear. Instead, the covering had to be manually lifted from the statue by its talented twenty-six-year-old sculptor, Benjamin Victor. This reluctance to be revealed is metaphorically indicative of the difficulty faced in trying to untangle individual interpretations and memories of Sarah Winnemucca. Her birth is believed to have coincided with the first contact of whites with the Northern Paiute, in 1844, the year John C. Frémont’s expedition passed by Pyramid Lake in what is now northwestern Nevada. By the time of her early and somewhat mysterious death in 1891, she was fluent in several languages, had written the book Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, met with President Rutherford B. Hayes and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and had opened a school for Native American children near Lovelock, Nevada. Unity, even as witnessed at the dedication ceremony, is impossible to sustain, despite such massive efforts as those instigated after the Civil War. While the National Statuary Hall and its Civil War roots might strike some contemporary scholars as old fashioned at best, the myriad celebrations that took place around Winnemucca’s statue both in Washington and in Nevada suggest that the Statuary Hall remains relevant and compelling. Andreas Huyssen critiques this nineteenth-century urge to commemorate: “The main concern of the nineteenth-century nation-states was to mobilize and monumentalize national and universal pasts so as to legitimize and give meaning to the present and to envision the future…. This model no longer works.”2 While Huyssen focuses his anti-dialectical comments on European history, American memorialization follows a similar path during a similar time frame, just as fraught—or blessed —with diversity and competition. The French historian Pierre Nora’s efforts have been widely recognized as foundation to studying memorialization, and a likely influence on Huyssen:

…there are as many memories as there are groups, that memory is by nature multiple yet specific; collective and plural yet individual…. By contrast, history belongs to everyone and to no one and therefore has a universal vocation…. At the heart of history is a criticism destructive of spontaneous memory.3 30 Kyhl Lyndgaard

The individual reality and struggle of Winnemucca’s life and her subsequent statue need to be studied in their full implications. Indeed, as a representative of the Paiute nation, but memorialized by the United States, even the choice of the appropriate nation on which to base a national memory can be problematic. Perhaps much of the difficulty stems from the fact that more than a century had passed between the date of Winnemucca’s death and the dedication of the memorial statue. Memories change because memories are human, and cannot help but change over time. Even for individuals, memories shift in significance as time passes. A better understanding of Winnemucca’s importance can help ensure the continued relevance of the statue, thus avoiding a falsely legitimizing memory. The possibility of a memorial statue falling out of favor is perhaps best illustrated by the near simultaneous suggestion to remove Nevada’s other statue, that of Senator Patrick McCarran (D-NV). Today, McCarran is best known by his many detractors as an ally of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s, yet he was the namesake for much of Nevada’s infrastructure, including freeways in Reno and the airport in Las Vegas. These named structures stand as a testa- ment to his influence on behalf of Nevada while serving in the United States Senate. Yet, on the front page of the Reno Gazette-Journal the day the statue was dedicated, one story discussed Sarah Winnemucca, while the next was titled “Split by Ideologies in Life, Nevadans now Share Hall.”4 Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), when asked to comment on McCarran’s statue, said, “Well, he’s here, and that’s the way it is. How’s that for a ringing endorsement? … Pat McCar- ran did a lot for the state… but he was an anti-Semite and not a very pleasant man.”5 State Rep. Shelley Berkley (D) even went as far as to give support to removing the statue of McCarran, although Reid and others such as Nevada’s Governor Kenny Guinn (R) had stopped short of such a call.6 Removing statues is extremely unusual, and so the fact that rumblings were heard for McCarran’s statue to be replaced is significant. The Architect of the Capi- tol has published the procedure for replacement, made possible only with a bill passed in 2000 by Congress. Kansas’s George Washington Glick, replaced in 2003 by Dwight D. Eisenhower, is the lone statue to have been replaced to this date.7 Because McCarran lobbied for years to grant land on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation to white European immigrants, Winnemucca’s inclusion in the National Statuary Hall shows an historical moment markedly different from the past.8 The memorial statue itself is bronze and stands atop a pedestal with a plaque that reads “Sarah Winnemucca / [facsimile of signature “Sarah Winnemucca Hop- kins”] / 1844-1891 / Nevada / Defender of Human Rights / Educator / Author of first book by a Native woman.”9 A mature woman here, Winnemucca is depicted as if walking, with an ornate fringed dress that appears wind-blown. Held up in her right hand is a shellflower, representing her original name, Thocmetony; her left hand clasps a book at her side, representing her status as a writer and teacher. The statue stands out from the older memorial statues, which predominantly depict white male figures standing upright, with arms at their sides. Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington 31

Sarah Winnemucca. (Nevada Historical Society)

As Victor notes in his “An Artists’ Perspective on Sarah Winnemucca,” his statue is clearly linked with the Statue of Liberty. “The link is subtle, almost subconscious, but it is there. With her book in her left hand and her right hand raised, she makes the literal strides that the idealized foundations of our nation stand for.”10 The few extant portraits of Winnemucca served as models for costume and physical features, but those formal portraits do not hint at Victor’s fluid and active interpretation of Winnemucca as walking with the book and flower. Victor’s personal responsibility for the depiction should not be overstated, despite his role as sculptor. The historical and cultural process has been centu- 32 Kyhl Lyndgaard

ries in the making, giving meaning to Victor’s choices, as well as to Nevada’s approval of the statue. Sarah Winnemucca herself is the most important person in this depiction, as she fashioned a public portrayal of herself through hundreds of speeches, a series of portraits, and writing what is seen as the first autobiography by a Native American woman. Her own rhetorical choices, un- avoidably colored by her white audiences, are therefore played out physically in both the fact and details of the memorial statue. Despite the unity professed in 2005, Winnemucca’s worthiness for a statue was not self-evident at the time of her death. The McCarran statue, after all, was dedicated only six years after his death in 1954, while 116 years passed between Winnemucca’s death and her statue’s dedication. How did Winnemucca become a person of sufficient “historical renown” in the twenty-first century? As Pelosi remarked, the law that established a National Statuary Hall was passed in the waning months of the Civil War. The year 1864 also saw the creation of the state of Nevada, just days before the presidential election. Sarah Winnemucca was about twenty years old then, and living near what was the largest city in Nevada, Virginia City. Winnemucca, along with her father and other family members, first performed for audiences in that same year. Vari- ous tableaux vivants played on white ideas of “Indianness” of that time and venue. Included were “The Indian Camp,” “The War Dance,” “Scalping of an Emigrant Girl by a Bannock Scout,” and others of similar themes, as well as a series that depicted the mytho-historical relationship between Pocahontas and John Smith.11 Winnemucca, of course, played the role of Pocahontas. While the Winnemuccas were prominent members of their Paiute band, these performances were not strict depictions of their pre-contact lives, but were instead aimed squarely at white stereotypes of Native Americans. Winnemucca voluntarily entered a long-standing dichotomy in which Native American women were expected to play the role of either princess or squaw, as Malea Powell argues through Rayna Green’s powerful theory of “The Pocahontas Perplex.”12 Winnemucca was popularly called “The Princess” even into her late forties by white newspapers such as the Elko Independent.13 On the other end of her life, depicting the era when she first appeared on stage in Virginia City, and even earlier in the Carson Valley as a potential dance partner when she worked as a domestic servant, the youngest-known depiction of Winnemucca appears in Dan De Quille’s The Big Bonanza, with the caption “Princess Sarah Winnemucca.”14 Not surprisingly, contemporary scholars have found Winnemucca’s adopted Indian Princess persona troubling at times. Cari M. Carpenter, who is sympathetic to Winnemucca, details several critics, and draws a useful comparison between Winnemucca and the figure of La Malinche.15 La Malinche is seen by many as a traitor who served Cortés, and is alternatively reclaimed as the mother of Chicano culture. Joanna Cohan Scherer suggests that Winnemucca’s activist work on behalf of the Paiutes was “incompatible and even in conflict” with the adopted stereotype of Indian Princess.16 Scherer assembles an authoritative Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington 33

Sarah Winnemucca. (Nevada Historical Society)

series of portraits that Winnemucca posed for over a period of many years, and by different photographers—many of which Benjamin Victor used as he worked on the memorial statue. Because of the high degree of consistency in costume among these disparate portraits, Scherer convincingly argues that Winnemucca self-consciously fashioned her dress while working as an activist during the 1870s and 1880s.17 This analysis is corroborated in Winnemucca’s autobiography, Life Among the Piutes, as she explains her desire to wear a certain dress while lecturing.18 34 Kyhl Lyndgaard

While Scherer may critique Winnemucca’s choices, Winnemucca is credited for the ability to make her own choices. Malea Powell, discussing Winnemucca, writes of how “American Indian texts, especially autobiographies, are read liter- ally as ‘authentic’ expressions of Indian cultures, simple point-of-view retellings of particular events.”19 Winnemucca’s costume may still be misperceived as “traditional” or “authentic,” but in fact was part of a persona she found useful in gaining an audience. Her message, especially later in her life, veered away from those early depictions of Pocahontas, although her stage clothing remained fairly static. Unfortunately, texts and images associated with Native Americans, especially those from the nineteenth century and earlier, continue to be taken as a self-reflexive mirror of their reality. Victor affirmed Winnemucca’s choices in costume. He writes, “Her dress, although not typical of what Sarah would have worn every day, was meant to help rally people to her cause…. From an aesthetic standpoint the intricate weavings, beads, knots, and twists create a wonderful array of visual textures.”20 Still, some critics continue to maintain that Winnemucca’s choices in dress harmed her public image even as they broadened her audience. Linda Bolton notes that “then and now, the theatricality of Winnemucca’s performative poses cost her greatly, particularly in the eyes of her critics, who have condemned her as being either fraudulently Indian or conciliatorily guilty in reproducing negative representations of Native people’s dispossession.”21 Winnemucca, born of two Paiute parents, is often referred to as a victim who can’t fit in either of two worlds.22 As Powell concludes, however, this characterization is unfair, noting that “the ‘torn between two worlds’ victimization…leaves American Indians who didn’t ‘disappear’ in the position of being victims of our own subjectivity.”23 Native Americans, as the Princess/Squaw dichotomy suggests, are therefore expected to either assimilate or physically vanish. Winnemucca’s persistence in her work as an activist, despite many frustrations in her lifetime, are now affirmed in the memorial statue. Her work walked a fine line between stereotype and achievement, and should be seen as an incredible example of refusing the choices offered. Referring to Winnemucca as a victim because of her performances is also a bit problematic, as Winnemucca seemed to enjoy being in front of an audience from an early age. Her time in Virginia City seemed to have begun her legend, but Winnemucca’s performances occur throughout her life, and her physical appearance is always referenced. Fanny Corbusier was the wife of an army surgeon at Camp McDermitt, and her memoirs recall Winnemucca’s presence:

With a flourish which I have never seen duplicated in any show, she [Winnemucca] would gallop across the parade ground—supple, but erect and in perfect balance—her quirt hand lifted in a queenly salute. Between the barracks and across the parade ground again, and she would be gone among the lusty cheers of the men.24 Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington 35

Assuming that Corbusier is an accurate observer, this level of theatricality was clearly voluntary, and indeed Winnemucca decided to marry one of the soldiers there, Lt. Edward Bartlett. Winnemucca’s time at Camp McDermitt is portrayed quite differently in her own writing, however. She instead tells how she traveled from Pyramid Lake to Camp McDermitt to lobby for the Paiutes, and while at McDermitt was constantly afraid of sexual assault: “I went to the commanding officer, and said, ‘Colonel, I am here all alone with so many men, I am afraid…. I want you to protect me against your soldiers, and I want you to protect my people also…”25 Winnemucca makes no reference to her husband at any time, and in fact mentions only two of her marriages in the book, which is often called an autobiography. Clearly, her choices of personal presentation were not only in costume. While these worries about sexual assault are certainly credible, Danielle Tisinger notes how Winnemucca may be using constructions from sentimental novels and westerns of the time to create “dramatic interest.”26 By choosing to write a sentimental narrative, Carpenter notes, “A woman [like Winnemucca] who carried a knife, rode bareback, and physically defended herself had to tailor herself carefully.”27 In addition to criticisms that Winnemucca participated in a white stereotype of an Indian Princess, she also suffers in the memories of some Native Americans.28 Ralph Burns, a skilled Pyramid Lake Paiute storyteller, delivered a blessing at the 2005 dedication ceremony. Burns’s words, spoken in Paiute with no translation given, acknowledge Winnemucca’s mixed legacy: “A few people don’t understand, but the history of the things she did is what brought her to this great place. Avoiding any and all controversy, we all pay tribute to her.”29 Winnemucca’s book frequently shows the opinion of the Paiutes turning against her because the whites broke the promises she conveyed. Her work for the United States Army during the Bannock War, as well as her family’s attempts to minimize retaliation against settlers, is also seen by some as collaborating with the enemy, yet Life Among the Piutes argues persuasively that she was working for peace and for the safe return of members of her immediate family, then held captive by the Bannocks. Furthermore, the emergence of her family as leaders may well have been cause for some jealousy from other tribal groups. At the time of her death, in 1891, Winnemucca likely believed that she had failed in almost all of her missions. These concerns were addressed at the dedication ceremony. Senator Reid stated that “I think if she could see us today, she might change her mind…her image in the Capitol is proof her story remains very much alive.”30 Pelosi went even further, citing Winnemucca’s own words, “‘Those who have maligned me have not known me.’”31 In her 1883 book, Winnemucca elaborated: “It is true that my people sometimes distrust me, but that is because words have been put in my mouth which have turned out to be nothing but idle wind.”32 Indeed, the many promises Winnemucca procured from the federal government on behalf of the Paiutes are well documented, as are the almost equal number of promises broken. 36 Kyhl Lyndgaard

Yet these divided memories are not necessarily in the far past. Even after the statue was approved, concerns over Winnemucca’s legacy remained. Dorothy Ely, a Pyramid Lake Paiute, said, “Sarah is not that accepted on the reservation where I live. She is seen more as a traitor than being helpful. She had good intentions but some people don’t see it that way.”33 Ely does not agree with this assessment, however: “I don’t know if it [Pyramid Lake Reservation] would even be here if not for her. People here say they don’t want the statue. I think there should be one for all these things she did.”34 Today, a sentiment similar to Ralph Burns’s blessing is on display at the Pyramid Lake Paiute Museum. Another example of mixed memories can be seen in a 1994 debate. A controversy emerged over a proposal to name a new elementary school in Reno after Winnemucca. As Sally Zanjani explains, both whites and Paiutes were enlisted on either side of the debate, with some preferring the name of a local housing development. In a case of poetic justice, a Paiute performing artist named Alex- andra Voorhees—who portrays Winnemucca at various events—helped sway the school board meeting to name the school for Sarah Winnemucca because of Winnemucca’s belief in education.35 My own analysis is that Winnemucca’s choices were made with good intentions, but she often was forced to choose the lesser of two evils. Teaching Winnemucca’s book Life Among the Piutes has been controversial even in the schools of Pyramid Lake Reservation. Carpenter’s epilogue to her chapter on Winnemucca centers on the efforts of a teacher named Harriet Brady, who ordered copies of the book only after a new school board was elected for the 2000-2001 school year. Brady has found that many of her students have long- standing beliefs that Winnemucca was a traitor.36 As Carpenter summarizes, “[t] o address the collective and individual memories of Winnemucca at Pyramid Lake today is to realize that some residents’ anger stems from disagreements about how Northern Paiutes should be represented and remembered, and in turn, how their nation is defined.”37 Or, in a casual shorthand I’ve heard, if you stand in the middle of the street in Pyramid Lake’s small towns and shout the name “Sarah Winnemucca,” half the people will throw flowers and the other half will throw rocks. Regardless of the divided memories that Sarah Winnemucca engenders among many groups, she has undeniably held a long-standing appeal to women’s movements. Her statue’s inclusion in the National Statuary Hall would never have occurred if not for the long-term interest in her by other women, particularly middle-class white women. Her the legacy would be less influential if not for Progressive women’s advocates. Helen Hunt Jackson published a letter by Winnemucca in the groundbreaking 1881 book A Century of Dishonor, and Life Among the Piutes was published only with the editorial and financial backing of Mary Mann and Elizabeth Peabody. Peabody later helped Winnemucca with the finances of opening a school in Lovelock, Nevada, for Native American children. Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington 37

It is of interest that the first attempt to put a statue of Winnemucca in the National Statuary Hall was “floated in 1908 by the Federated Indian Women’s Club”—a group of Native Americans.38 The next major attempt came more than eighty years later. Georgia Hedrick, a Reno elementary-school teacher, conducted a 1992 letter-writing campaign for a statue. Hedrick’s biggest victory in her campaign was gained with the help of David Abrams, a member of the Walker River Paiute Tribe. With Abrams as lobbyist, the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada passed a resolution in favor of a statue.39 While temporarily unsuc- cessful, these efforts marked a groundswell of support that included both white women and Native Americans. The effort that resulted in a state bill in favor of a statue was spearheaded by the Nevada Women’s History Project, chaired by Carrie Townley Porter.40 The statue was authorized in 2001 on the strength of a unanimous vote by the state assembly and senate.41 As the statue was considered a gift from the people of Nevada to the nation, fundraising was a crucial part of the process, and a list of all donors—including city governments, businesses, and more than five hundred individuals—can be found on the Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs’s website.42 One interesting fundraising strategy as the Nevada Women’s History Project worked towards its goal of $150,000 was sponsoring a number of “Pink Tea” events, often held at the governor’s mansion in Carson City. The April 2003 event had space for a hundred and twenty guests, and those $15 tickets sold out. Pink Tea gather- ings were originally held as part of the women’s suffrage movement nearly one hundred years ago.43 The money raised at the 2003 event was used not only towards the statue in the National Statuary Hall, but also towards another full- size statue in the Nevada State Capitol and smaller replicas as well.44 Those people most captivated by Sarah Winnemucca, past and present, are well-connected white women. Winnemucca’s rhetorical choices remain extraordinarily effective, as her intended audience remains such strong supporters. The problematic aspects of Winnemucca’s Indian Princess persona are mitigated by the fact that she was consciously participating in the stereotype in order to reach and persuade audiences to support her causes. Today, Sarah Winnemucca is remembered not just as an historical figure, but as a symbol of the plights and successes of the larger groups of people whom she represented. While the plaque on the memorial statue’s pedestal may not mention war or trauma, the statue itself attests materially to the trauma that the Paiute suffered. Much scholarly discussion about memory has to do with sites of trauma, especially those associated with the Holocaust, to the point where “explorations of memory in our world cannot do without the notion of historical trauma.”45 While trauma should not be the sole preoccupation of memory, the connection is important. While Sarah Winnemucca’s statue may not immediately seem to fit this argument, looking at the way that Native American populations were decimated in the American West during Winnemucca’s lifetime reveals a clear connection between trauma and memory on one hand, and Winnemucca 38 Kyhl Lyndgaard

Sarah Winnemucca. (Nevada Historical Society) Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington 39 as a witness and participant on the other. The role of war in Nora’s French Revolutionary War studies, and the prominent role that the American Civil War had in the creation of the National Statuary Hall is also clear. Remembering Sarah Winnemucca as an activist, writer, and educator, while accurate, leaves out the fact that she also was both a war hero and a war victim. The wording on her statue may not attest to these experiences, but she was a guide for the United States Army during the Bannock War, and was often on the other side witnessing the sufferings of the Paiutes as they were forced to submit to brutal relocation and other mistreatment that resulted in massive casualties. These events are ones that she did depict in her book and lectures. Her book Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims shows again and again that Sarah Winnemucca and the Paiutes suffered immensely. For example, one of her most impassioned arguments comes near the end of the narrative: “For shame! For shame! You [white people] dare to cry out Liberty, when you hold us in places against our will, driving us from place to place as if we were beasts.”46 Passages like this may well reflect her oratory performances, and show Winnemucca as embodying her entire tribe by consciously sliding from first person to second person. The argument of cultural representation was also made repeatedly at the dedication ceremony, perhaps most concisely when Jim Gibbons said, “We’re here today not just to mention Sarah Winnemucca but to mention the cultural history of the great nation of Paiutes.”47 Dennis Hastert listed connections to other Native American men and women; North Dakota’s Sakakawea is another statue, while a painting of Pocahontas also hangs in the Capitol. He noted that Winnemucca was the eighth woman depicted by a statue.48 Other Native Ameri- cans in the National Statuary Hall are Oklahoma’s Will Rogers and Sequoyah, as well as New Mexico’s Po’Pay.49 Allowing Winnemucca to stand in for a larger cultural group is also referenced by people such as Louise Tannheimer, the grandniece of Winnemucca, who said, “We need to have someone shine up there.”50 That Winnemucca stands in for a larger group of people is entirely consistent with her book, which begins with several chapters more akin to ethnography than a conventional first-person autobiography.Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims pres- ents a persona larger than one individual. As Bolton explains, “Winnemucca’s story is implicitly the story of her people, and, as such, it disrupts the ideal of autobiographical individualism…both Winnemucca’s print and theatrical performances constitute an autobiographical stance (and storytelling) that is inher- ently performative.”51 Undeniably, the statue is not only a statue of Winnemucca, but of the Paiute people. That Victor chose to depict Winnemucca holding a shellflower aloft—the flower that her originary, and fully Paiute, name came from—helps to underscore the primacy of the larger cultural group. Victor’s stylistic choice to echo the Statue of Liberty is thus especially resonant because the fictional Lady Liberty also stands for an ideal larger than an individual. 40 Kyhl Lyndgaard

That Sarah Winnemucca is dressed in the ceremonial Princess garment in the statue is appropriate, as that is the clothing which helps allow her to be seen by the masses as standing in for an entire cultural group, one which had been subject to a lengthy and decimating process of war and relocation. Nonethe- less, an element of individuality is stripped away as the memorial statue is a depiction of the public, performative Sarah Winnemucca. Sarah Winnemucca is indeed richly deserving of a memorial statue. A gift from the state of Nevada, the statue represents Winnemucca’s gender and eth- nicity in a space dominated by white males. Winnemucca’s statue is part of an overdue national movement to honor a more diverse history than that previously displayed in the United States Capitol. It is no surprise that the speakers made no mention of the fact that the stage was centered in front of John Vanderlyn’s massive oil painting, “Landing of Columbus,” or that the adjacent statue in the rotunda depicts Andrew Jackson, architect of the Indian Relocation Act. Even the style in which Winnemucca is depicted is significant and different, as her statue is the most dynamic and free-form sculpture in the hall. Winnemucca, as she now stands in the National Statuary Hall, can also be remembered by her own words:

I, Sarah Winnemucca, am a shell-flower, such as I wear on my dress. My name is Thocmetony. I am so beautiful! Who will come and dance with me while I am so beautiful? Oh, come and be happy with me! I shall be beautiful while the earth lasts. Somebody will always admire me; and who will come and be happy with me in the Spirit-land? I shall be beautiful forever there.52

Ernest Stromberg writes about what he calls “American Indian rhetorical survivance”: “by bringing an other, in some ways incommensurably different, understanding of the world into the rhetorical parlor, these rhetoricians expand the terministic reality we all inhabit.”53 Looking at the National Statuary Hall as a “rhetorical parlor”—which necessarily negotiates among memory, history, and meaning—our memorialization of Winnemucca becomes a positive enlargement of what Americans, and more specifically, Nevadans, value. Because Victor’s statue depicts the public image that Winnemucca helped to craft, it embodies many of the contradictions and debates surrounding her self-fashioning. This representation is important and appropriate, because it honors the deliberate and strategic choices Winnemucca made to reach wide audiences on behalf of herself and her people. To represent her otherwise would ignore choices which, even if controversial, were her own. The image remains complex and embattled, yet serves as an accurate reflection of the even more complex and embattled relationship between Native American peoples and the federal government located in that same building. Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington 41

Notes

1Sarah Winnemucca statue dedication; videorecording, West Lafayette, Indiana: National Cable Satellite Corp., 2005. This C-SPAN recording is about thirty minutes long, and is referenced extensively in this essay. The 1864 bill reads: …the President is hereby authorized to invite each and all the States to provide and furnish statues, in marble or bronze, not exceeding two in number for each State, of deceased persons who have been citizens thereof, and illustrious for their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military services…. From The Architect of the Capitol. “The Origin of the National Statuary Hall Collection,” http:// www.aoc.gov/cc/art/nsh/nsh_coll_origin.cfm (accessed 15 February 2007). 2Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 2. 3Pierre Nora, “General Introduction: Between Memory and History,” in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, Pierre Nora, ed. (1984). English edition: Lawrence D. Kritzman, ed., Arthur Goldhammer, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 3. 4Geralda Miller, “Spilt by Ideologies in Life, Nevadans Now Share Hall,” Reno Gazette-Journal (9 March 2005), pp. 1A, 4A. The leading article is Geralda Miller, “Statue Honors Paiute Woman who Led Fight for Equal Rights,” Reno Gazette-Journal (9 March 2005), pp. 1A, 4A. 5Steve Tetreault, “Statue of Ex-Senator to Stay Despite Shift in Perspectives,” Las Vegas Review- Journal (10 March 2005), p. 1B. 6Brendan Riley, “Speaker: Get Former Nevada Senator’s Statue Out of U.S. Capitol,” Associated Press State and Local Wire, (24 March 2005). Reid’s and Guinn’s statements appear in Tetreault’s Review-Journal article. 7The Architect of the Capitol, “National Statuary Hall Collection Statues Replaced by the States,” http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/nsh/nsh_replaced.cfm (accessed 15 February 2007).; The Architect of the Capitol, “Procedure for Replacement of Statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection,” www.aoc.gov/sites/default/files/statue_replacement_guidelines_2014.pdf January 2014, pp.1-3 (accessed 1 October 2015). 8Miller, “Split by ideologies,” p. 4A. 9The Architect of the Capitol, “Sarah Winnemucca.” http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/nsh/ nsh_coll_origin.cfm (accessed 15 February 2007). 10Victor, Benjamin, “An Artist’s Perspective on Sarah Winnemucca,” http://www.benjaminvic- tor.com/winnemucca.php (accessed 15 February 2007). 11Noreen Groover Lape, “‘I would rather be among my people, but not to live with them as they live’: Cultural Liminality and Double Consciousness in Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins’s Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims,” American Indian Quarterly, 22:3 (Summer 1998), 259-80. 12Malea Powell,“Princess Sarah, the Civilized Indian: The Rhetoric of Cultural Literacies in Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins’s Life Among the Piutes,” in Rhetorical Women: Roles and Representations (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 63-83. Powell discusses the “Pocahontas Perplex” on pages 65-66; the influential essay Powell refers to is Rayna Green, “The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture,” Works Massachusetts Review, 16 (Autumn 1975). 13Sally Zanjani, Sarah Winnemucca (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 290. 14Dan De Quille, The Big Bonanza. 1876. Introduction by Oscar Lewis. Reprint (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947) 12. 15Cari M. Carpenter, Seeing Red: Anger, Sentimentality, and American Indians (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2008), 93. 16Joanna Cohan Scherer, “The Public Faces of Sarah Winnemucca,” Cultural Anthropology, 3:2 (May 1988), 178-204, 178. 17Ibid., 178-79. 18“I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with this reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called the mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family.” Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, 1883. Forward by Catherine S. Fowler. Reprint. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1994), 75. 42 Kyhl Lyndgaard

19Powell, “Princess Sarah,” 64. 20Victor, “An Artist’s Perspective.” 21Linda Bolton, Facing the Other: Ethical Disruption and the American Mind (Baton Rouge: Loui- siana State University Press, 2004), 128. 22Note, for example, the last line of Catherine S. Fowler’s otherwise highly sympathetic and thoughtful foreword to Life Among the Piutes: “She was of two worlds, and perhaps sadly, at home in neither.” (From Catherine S. Fowler, “Foreword,” in Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Piutes, 3-4.) 23Powell, “Princess Sarah,” 77-78. 24Fanny Corbusier’s memoirs are in Special Collections at the University of Nevada, Reno. This passage, however, is quoted in Zanjani, Sarah Winnemucca (p. 106). The army post is now the Idaho/Nevada border town McDermitt, next to the large Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Indian Reservation in Quinn River country (known as Queen’s River in Winnemucca’s time and book), and to Northern Paiutes of the nineteenth century, it was a positive example of a relationship between the U.S. Army and Native Americans. 25Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Piutes, 102-103. 26Danielle Tisinger, “Textual Performance and the Western Frontier: Sarah Winnemucca Hop- kins’s Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims,” in Western Subjects: Autobiographical Writing in the North American West, Kathleen Boardman and Gioia Woods, eds. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006), 96-126. 27Carpenter, Seeing Red, 92. 28For a good survey of earlier criticism against Winnemucca by scholars, consult Andrew S. McClure, “Sarah Winnemucca: [Post]Indian Princess and Voice of the Paiutes,” MELUS, 24:2 (Summer 1999); 29-51. McClure and many other authors from the late 1990s argued for more studies on Winnemucca, and the call has been taken up, helped by Zanjani’s biography and the creation of the memorial statue. 29Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs, Government Document BGIC 29-C91 9: Sa 7, Sarah Winnemucca Statue, Nevada State Capitol, 14 June 2005. 30Sarah Winnemucca statue dedication. Videorecording. West Lafayette, Indiana: National Cable Satellite Corp., 2005. 31Ibid. 33Winnemucca Hopkins, Life, 258. 33Dorothy Ely, quoted in Rick Heredia, “Sarah Winnemucca May be Honored with Statue,” News from Indian Country, 16:21 (15 Nov. 2002), p. 7B. 34Ibid. 35Zanjani, Sarah Winnemucca, 299-300. 36Carpenter, Seeing Red, 116-18. 37Ibid., 118. 38Zanjani, quoted in Heredia, “Sarah Winnemucca May be Honored,” p. 7B. 39Georgia Hedrick, “Sarah Winnemucca papers, 1991-92,” UNR Special Collections. The resolution passed on 19 June 1992. 40Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs, Government Document BGIC 29-C91 9: Sa 7, Sarah Winnemucca Statue, Nevada State Capitol, 14 June 2005. Others on the committee included Mary Lee Fulkerson, Debbie Allen, Richard Hooker, and Steven High. The first Lady of Nevada, Dema Guinn, was the Honorary Chair. More information on the Nevada Women’s History Project can be accessed at www.nevadawomen.org 41Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs, Government Document BGIC 29-C91 9: Sa 7. This bill passed on May 29, 2001. 42www.nevadaculture.org 43Sheila Gardner, “‘Pink Tea’ Aims to Get Sarah Winnemucca in U.S. Capitol,” Reno Gazette- Journal. 21 April 2003. 44Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs. Government Document BGIC 29-C91 9: Sa 7. 45Huyssen, Present Pasts, 9. 46Winnemucca Hopkins, Life, 243-44. 47Winnemucca statue dedication, videorecording. 48Ibid. Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington 43

49Anon., “Pueblo Leader Completes National Statuary Hall,” The Circle: News from an American Indian Perspective, 26:10 (October 2005), 3. Po’Pay was also the one hundredth statue dedicated, and was sculpted by a Native American artist. 50Louise Tannheimer, quoted in Gwendolyn Clancy, Bob Harmon, and Dave Morgan, Sarah Winnemucca: A Capitol Figure, video (Carson City: Nevada Department of Cultural Af- fairs, 2002). 51Bolton, Facing the Other, 152. 52Winnemucca Hopkins, Life, 47. This song is part of the largely ethnographical second chapter, “Domestic and Social Moralities.” This passage, from pages 45-48, depicts the song that young Paiute women would sing during the spring Flower Festival when they were allowed to engage in courtship with young men. 53Ernest Stromberg, “Rhetoric and American Indians: An Introduction,” in American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word Magic, Ernest Stromberg, ed.(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 1-14. This quotation is from page 7. The italics are his; the term survivance was coined by Gerald Vizenor. “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 1 Las Vegas’s Failure to Open a Resort Hotel, 1905-1940

Larry Dale Gragg

On March 13, 1926, the Las Vegas Age published a front-page article on the plans of Alex Richmond, a “wealthy Santa Barbara hotel owner,” who had recently opened the Chelsea Hotel in Los Angeles, “to build a high class tourist hotel for Las Vegas.” Richmond explained that the hotel would have a hundred sixty rooms, along with a golf course, riding stables, and all the “other features of a high class tourist recreation center.”2 Richmond’s planned tourist hotel, one of several promoted in Las Vegas between 1905 and 1940, never became a reality. The hotel developers, particularly between 1926 and 1931, typically had the enthusiastic support of the local press, as well as that of most community and state political leaders, but it was never enough. In an era when other locales in the Southwest were opening successful tourist hotels in response to the rapidly developing American “disposition to spend time and money away from home,” all promoters of Las Vegas resort and large commercial-hotel projects in these years failed.3 Flawed plans, the refusal of the leaders of the powerful Union Pacific railroad to invest significantly in any of the projects, the lack of sufficient funding in the small desert town, and the reluctance of out-of-state financial institutions to provide backing, all contributed to the absence of a resort hotel in Las Vegas until 1941.

Larry Gragg is Curators’ Teaching Professor of History at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri. He is the author of several articles on Las Vegas in popular culture and the promotion of Las Vegas. He is also the author of Bright Light City: Las Vegas in Popular Culture (2013) and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel: The Gangster, the Flamingo, and the Making of Modern Las Vegas (2015). “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 45

Interest in establishing a resort hotel pre-dated the establishment of the town. William A. Clark, copper baron and United States Senator from Montana, partnered with Edward H. Harriman of the Union Pacific to build the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad. Clark chose the Las Vegas town site as a “division point” to serve as a layover for passengers and a good location to build repair shops. Also, because of the aquifers fed by the snow melt from the mountains surrounding the Las Vegas Valley, he would have an ice house to keep produce shipments fresh in the summer. Eight months prior to selling lots for the new town in 1904, Clark announced plans to build “a magnificent hotel and sanitarium, which will cost about $300,000, and eclipse anything of the kind in the West.” He promised it would be “as fine a hotel and health sanitarium as can be found in the country” because the area had “a salubrious climate… ideal for those suffering with pulmonary and other diseases.”4 In September 1905, C. O. Whittemore, president of the railroad’s subsidiary unit, the Las Vegas Land and Water Company, invited Los Angeles businessmen to invest in Clark’s promised “modern hotel.” In the following year, talk continued of “a grand tourist hotel,” but now, because gambling was legal in Nevada, “a Monte Carlo attachment was to be included with games large enough to attract the crowned heads of Europe.”5 Nothing materialized from these initial pledges to build a magnificent hotel for the slowly growing railroad town, but the idea remained. In January 1918 the St. Louis attorney J. C. Fisher, who had visited Las Vegas a few times and purchased land in the community, wrote to the Las Vegas Age arguing that, because of the favorable climate in Las Vegas, a “good resort hotel man,” could build a “resort hotel that would put the little desert town on the map in good shape.”6 Later that year a speculator from New York named Charles Hubbell visited Las Vegas and explained that he had “plans to build a one-hundred- room tourist hotel somewhere in Nevada and perhaps even in Las Vegas.” Charles “Pop” Squires, publisher of the Las Vegas Age, predicted a resort hotel would prove to be an immediate benefit to “every class of business” in town, yet his hopes were not realized as Hubbell did not follow up on his plans.7 Squires was not a simplistic town booster. He fully understood the economic challenges the small company town faced. Las Vegas had grown slowly. In 1910 there were fewer than a thousand people in the community, and a decade later the population had grown to only 2,304, more than three hundred of whom worked for the Union Pacific.8 Aware of the necessity of diversifying its economy, the Chamber of Commerce worked diligently, though unsuccessfully, to promote the Las Vegas Valley, with its artesian wells, as an agricultural wonderland. Boosters’ hopes for more income from mineral production in nearby mines, after a brief boom during World War I, evaporated as production tumbled dramatically in 1920 and 1921.9 Moreover, in less than two decades many town leaders had grown weary of their dependence upon the Union Pacific. Charles Corkhill, the publisher of the Las Vegas Review, 46 Larry Dale Gragg

Charles “Pop” Squires, publisher of the Las Vegas Age, was the most enthusiastic booster of Las Vegas in the 1920s. (Squires Collection, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)

struggled to find the correct metaphor for their plight, complaining first about Las Vegas being a “parasite” of the rail line, and then that the community had grown “tired of being treated like a child.”10 The reality of that dependence became most evident in the aftermath of a violent rail strike in 1922. Shop men—largely maintenance workers and not engineers, firemen, conductors, and brakemen—faced wage cuts of over 10 percent all across the country in 1922. This after the Union Pacific had dismissed nearly 11 percent of its wage force (including sixty men in Las Vegas) a year earlier as the nation struggled through a post-war recession. On “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 47

July 1 all the shop men except one machinist went on strike in Las Vegas in support of the national union effort. The labor dispute became violent when union men beat strikebreakers and stripped and tarred trainmaster George Zentmyer. On August 13 railroad guards fired gunshots in the air to keep strikers off company property. The violence prompted the United States marshal in the state capital to dispatch deputies to Las Vegas, and Governor Emmet Boyle sent in the state police. When the governor came down from Carson City to assess the situation he experienced firsthand the tension between the company and the strikers. One of the strikers, Salvadore Madrait, aimed a revolver at Boyle, who “whipped out” his own weapon and forced Madrait to drop his gun and be arrested. Throughout the labor dispute, the Las Vegas merchants, most of the town and county officials, and the Las Vegas Review supported the strikers.11 Sheriff Sam Gay even deputized several union men to help maintain order.12 Yet the Union Pacific emerged victorious, and the strikers drifted back to work in fall 1922. To punish Las Vegas for backing the strike, Union Pacific officials moved most of the repair-shop jobs to another town on the rail line. According to Eric Nystrom, the loss of hundreds of jobs drove the Las Vegas economy “into a period of stagnation.”13 Indeed, in 1925 the Chamber of Commerce explained to Union Pacific officials in Omaha that its community was “at this time experiencing the hardest period of depression in business known for a long period of years,” and that the downturn was mainly attributable to the layoffs by the company.14 New residents in the 1920s thought little of the dusty desert community. One who arrived in 1929 concluded that Las Vegas “was the least likely city to succeed of any of the United States.” There was only one paved street, and most of the commercial buildings were one-story wooden structures.15 To be sure, there were modest positive developments, particularly in infrastructure improvements. By the end of the decade a federal highway connected Las Vegas to both Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, in addition, passenger air service was established to those cities from Las Vegas.16 There was also some promising conversation in Washington, D.C., about the construction of a dam on the Colorado River near Las Vegas. As the perpetual booster “Pop” Squires explained in 1921, “In anticipation of a big rise in price of real estate in Las Vegas and Clark County when the big Boulder Canyon dam is started by the government, many outside people, as well as local citizens, are taking advantage of the moderately priced lots and farm lands in Clark County.”17 Yet more realistic residents understood that the loss of railroad jobs, along with limited prospects for agriculture, mining, or industry, meant that they had to look for other ways to sustain and grow their community.18 Some community promoters pinned their hopes on tourism as other communities were taking advantage of the increasing American interest in traveling to the Southwest. Railroads had taken the lead in developing tourism in the western states, but a rapidly developing network of roads made it ever 48 Larry Dale Gragg

Fremont Street in Las Vegas in 1917, as the town began to explore the possibility of a resort hotel. (Ferron Collection, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)

easier for busses and cars to take tourists to scenic and historic destinations. By the early 1920s there were resort hotels in Santa Fe and Gallup, New Mexico, as well as the famed El Tovar on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. By the end of the decade, in Palm Springs, California, the Desert Inn had expanded, and the Oasis and the El Mirador had opened. Travelers to Arizona could stay at La Posada in Winslow or the spectacular Arizona Biltmore just outside Phoenix. These properties usually featured comfortable or even luxurious accommodations, beautiful landscaping, fine dining, swimming pools, tennis courts, and golf courses.19 For some, the backing of the Santa Fe Railway or the Fred Harvey Company, or both, was critical in funding their construction. Indeed, rail lines such as the Southern Pacific, Northern Pacific, and Union Pacific had, since the late nineteenth century, invested heavily in developing hotels and lodges near national parks. As Alfred Runte has shown, “by World War I, every major Western railroad played a leading role in National Park publicity,” all in an effort to spur more rail passenger traffic.20 Given these developments, it is not surprising that many local promoters and outside developers teamed up hoping, by building a fashionable resort hotel, to promote Las Vegas with its mild winter climate, the prospects of a “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 49

The modest-sized Overland Hotel was the largest hotel in Las Vegas in the early 1920s. (Elton and Madelaine Garrett Collection, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)

nearby massive dam construction project, and its proximity to Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon. The community had only four modest hotels, the largest of which were the Overland and the Hotel Nevada.21 For four years, beginning in the troubled year of the railroad strike, members of the Chamber of Commerce, notably Dr. Roy Martin, had worked to persuade developers and officials at Union Pacific to build a resort hotel near Las Vegas.22 Finally, in January 1926, Alex Richmond decided to explore the possibility. A veteran California hotel man, Richmond had operated the Barbara Worth Hotel in El Centro, the Arlington Lodge at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains, and the Hotel Arlington in Santa Barbara, which an earthquake had destroyed the previous year. He had just opened the Hotel Chelsea in Los Angeles, and there were rumors that he was planning a hotel near Death Valley.23 Late in the month, Richmond, accompanied by officials from the Union Pacific, met with community business leaders and Nevada’s Governor, James Scrugham, and toured not only Las Vegas, but also nearby Black 50 Larry Dale Gragg

Canyon, a potential site of the much-discussed dam project. Encouraged by the imminent high-profile visit, Roy Martin, who had visited with Richmond in Santa Barbara, reported to the Chamber of Commerce “on the possibility of a large resort hotel which is being planned for Las Vegas.”24 Once he announced in March his intention to build a resort hotel to “cater principally to the higher class tourist trade,” a property that would employ one hundred forty people and eventually feature a swimming pool, golf course, and tennis courts, Richmond knew he had secured the interest of the business community in Las Vegas as well as the leadership of the Union Pacific.25 Al Cahlan, recently hired as editor of the Las Vegas Review, characterized Richmond’s decision as “one of the most important announcements in the history of the city.” He proclaimed that “prominent people from all over the world can be expected as guests to such a hotel,” and that its opening would prompt investment of “outside capital” to further develop the region.26 R. B. Robertson, the assistant traffic manager for the rail line, explained the company’s strategy in exploring this opportunity in a letter to Walter Bracken. Bracken was the company’s agent for its subsidiary, the Las Vegas Land and Water Company, which developed its land in Las Vegas. Robertson wrote that “a modern desert hotel with the solarium idea such as Mr. Richmond has in mind” would increase passenger traffic and “enable us to carry out the idea we have had in mind in the matter of opening up Death Valley as a scenic attraction from Las Vegas.” While Robertson may have intended his analysis to be confidential, theLas Vegas Review published an article a couple of months later that shared the Union Pacific’s rationale with its readers.27 Because of this keen interest, Richmond adroitly manipulated the rail line and the town to commit to several subsidies. From the Union Pacific and the community, Richmond sought a donation of a hundred acres, worth at least $15,000, upon which to develop his hotel project, along with “free water.” While they balked on the latter request, they complied with the former. To further entice Richmond, Walter Bracken offered $25,000 for “beautifying the surrounding acreage.” Richmond ultimately also called upon residents to purchase $50,000 of preferred stock in his holding company.28 A roadblock to conveying land to Richmond emerged in fall 1926. The Union Pacific wanted the hotel near its ranch land northeast of downtown and offered sixty-seven acres adjoining thirty-three acres it had donated to Las Vegas for a park. The city commissioners supported conveying the park land, but that was not possible under Nevada law. Governor Scrugham, who had supported this idea from the beginning as part of his aggressive efforts at economic development in Nevada, willingly called a special session of the state legislature to address this problem.29 On December 5 both houses of the legislature approved a bill granting power to county commissioners to “reconvey, … all the right, title and interest of said county in and to any land donated and dedicated for a public park” when at least 51 percent of the “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 51

Walter Bracken was the agent for Las Vegas Land and Water Company, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific. (Union Pacific Railroad Photo Collection, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)

number of voters in the previous congressional election petitioned them to do so.30 In less than a month, promoters of the hotel had enough signatures on a petition, and both the city and county commissioners voted to convey the park acreage back to the Las Vegas Land and Water Company.31 The best indication of widespread community support, beyond quickly gaining far more signatures than needed on the petition, can be found in a “protracted meeting” in early October of 1926; it involved hotel promoters and members of the Chamber of Commerce, city commission, and county commission. At its conclusion, Bracken reported that “all those concerned 52 Larry Dale Gragg

directly or indirectly with the enterprise are filled with enthusiasm and the hope that there will be no hindrance to the consummation of the project.”32 The “public-spirited citizens” Bracken noted included a handful of dedicated town boosters. Cahlan of the Review and Squires of the Age never wavered in championing the Richmond project. Bracken, the ever-dutiful agent for the Las Vegas Land and Water Company, had been a resident of Las Vegas since its establishment in 1905. Dr. Roy Martin, who opened the small town’s first hospital, served a term in the state legislature, presided over the Chamber of Commerce, and joined the Rotary Club, the Eagles, the Elks, and Masonic Order. James Cashman, a successful auto dealer, was on the County Commission and was an active member in the Chamber of Commerce. City commissioners, other members of the Chamber of Commerce, and Governor James Scrugham also lent a hand, as did officials with the Union Pacific, but this handful of men were only the most visible leaders in the collective effort to bring a resort hotel to Las Vegas. Unfortunately, these leaders were dealing with a man who had little chance of developing the project. First of all, Richmond failed to construct a consistent narrative about how much he intended to invest in the hotel and what kind of property it would be. Between March 1926 and August 1927 Richmond reported to either the local press or the Chamber of Commerce eight different estimates of construction costs ranging between $350,000 and $1,000,000. He also frequently changed plans for the hotel, at one point explaining that he intended to build a “Tourist-Commercial” hotel, one with fewer of the resort- hotel amenities, and he switched architects. In the twenty months he toyed with the community, Richmond consistently offered assurances that he was about to start construction, and when concerns developed about the delays, he dropped by a Chamber of Commerce meeting and told members, “Don’t get worried or excited over the seeming delay—remember this is a $600,000 project, and once it’s built we can’t tear it down and rebuild it if we find it unsatisfactory.”33 Increasingly skeptical city and county commissioners stipulated, as a condition of conveying the former city park land to Richmond, that he post a bond for $50,000 that he would lose should he not begin construction within six months. When no construction began they granted him extensions in both May and August 1927.34 Amidst all the delaying tactics, Richmond told several lies to the two Las Vegas newspapers, contending in one instance that all the bonds needed to start construction had been sold, and in February 1927 he claimed, “You may say that the building of my hotel at Las Vegas is now absolutely assured.”35 By fall 1927 it had become abundantly clear that Richmond had never had any prospects of securing funding. Walter Bracken reported to Union Pacific Vice President E. E. Calvin that Richmond “has made application to some 21 different bond houses and banks without success.”36 Armed with this knowledge of the developer’s failures, Calvin rejected Richmond’s request for a third extension on his obligation to begin construction.37 “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 53

As the doomed Richmond hotel project reached its ignominious end, a new key player emerged in the quest for a resort hotel. Leigh Hunt, born in Indiana in 1855, had enjoyed a storied career in global business. Prior to moving to Las Vegas, in 1923, Hunt had been a school teacher and administrator, president of Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, land speculator, part owner of a rail line, and successful entrepreneur in gold mining in Korea and in cotton production in Sudan. Along the way, Hunt not only had become wealthy, but also had become familiar with many powerful men including Herbert Hoover and Theodore Roosevelt, whom he advised on affairs in Asia and Africa.38 As he explored a place to retire with his wife, Jessie, Hunt found Santa Barbara “too damp” and San Diego “dirty and dilapidated.” However, stopping in Las Vegas in October 1920, Hunt wrote to his wife that the town’s “climate beats Colorado Springs.” It was “dry, clean & delightful” in southern Nevada.39 Hunt, always eager to explore new investment opportunities, commissioned a study of the Las Vegas Valley in summer 1923. The director of the study noted that even though the Vegas Valley was a desert, he found “about 1,000 acres in cultivation” because “water in unlimited quantities, of excellent quality is secured from flowing artesian wells of an average depth of 700 feet.” He also pointed out that “this valley is rich in mineral resources.”40 Most important, Hunt’s widow recollected many years later that he “felt that climate and the surrounding scenery alone would make it a wonderful resort” town. Walter Hunsaker, Hunt’s secretary, also remembered that his boss met often with Las Vegas businessmen, and “a favorite topic of discussion was the need for a … tourist hotel.”41 Indeed, Hunt argued that Las Vegas could eclipse Palm Springs as a desert resort destination. While he continued to invest in the stock market, Hunt also sought to exploit the possibilities in and around Las Vegas. He organized seven companies to acquire about four thousand acres in Clark County and to exploit the nitrate and gypsum deposits southeast of Las Vegas and the gold deposits in the Eldorado Canyon south of town.42 Most of his time, however, Hunt worked on the building of a tourist hotel for Las Vegas. While such a prospect in the 1920s seemed like a long shot to many in the community, Hunt enjoyed pursuing high-risk ventures. As Fessenden Meserve, a life-long friend, explained, “Mr. Hunt loved to play poker, and at that game probably was without a peer. That is not surprising as his entire career was based upon his willingness to take calculated risks.” Yet, he never enjoyed being the visible leader of a venture. Seldom did he join clubs or attend important social functions; Hunt preferred working in the background brokering deals.43 In late 1927, Hunt began working with R. B. Robertson of the Union Pacific, Fred Hesse, Mayor of Las Vegas, and Walter Bracken and Roy Martin to lure some Cleveland investors to build a resort hotel. By mid January 1928 Martin was able to report to the Chamber of Commerce that he and Hunt had hosted 54 Larry Dale Gragg

these Cleveland “capitalists” for several days.44 Eleven days later came the first press report of the project. “Wealthy Cleveland men,” a predictably excited “Pop” Squires told readers, “have become much interested in the construction of a tourist hotel near Las Vegas.”45 Over the next five months, Frank N. Riley, leader of the investment group, negotiated with city and Union Pacific leaders in an effort orchestrated by Hunt. Promised ninety acres by the Union Pacific, Riley committed his group to building the Desert Resort Hotel just south of the rail line’s ranch land. He promised that the property would feature a swimming pool, tennis courts, golf course, and, “far beyond the pale of irksome Blue laws,” a “casino that will offer all the attractions given by the great continental centers of Monte Carlo and Biarritz.”46 It is of note that Riley secured the services of Gilbert Stanley Underwood to design the hotel. Underwood, an architect with degrees from Yale and Harvard, had designed some structures for the Union Pacific at Bryce and Zion canyons, in addition to lodges at Yellowstone, Utah’s Cedar Breaks, and an hotel at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.47 An absence of any signs of construction in the summer months prompted “Pop” Squires to reassure readers in late July, “It should be remembered that many complications always arise in the preliminary stages of an enterprise such as this.”48 Squires understated the problem. In early October Union Pacific officials learned that the architect, Underwood, had invested more in the project than had Riley, and that the latter planned to “sever his connection with” the endeavor.49 With Riley’s exit this second effort at a resort hotel collapsed. Undeterred, Leigh Hunt rapidly pulled together a third proposal, this time for a one-hundred-fifty-room hotel with a projected cost of $500,000. With no plans for a casino, Hunt set up a company to offer “purely a tourist hotel,” believing that the absence of gambling would make this proposal a “business venture” superior to Riley’s ill-fated attempt.50 Hunt had a genuine vested interest in this venture, he committed $20,000 and a hundred eighty acres of land south of town for the hotel. He persuaded an investor from Hawaii named Frank Thompson to also invest $20,000 and the architect Gilbert Underwood to invest $10,000. Hunt included R. B. Robertson, Walter Bracken, James Cashman, and Roy Martin in the company. He encouraged the latter two to put together a list of twenty-five Las Vegas residents they believed could be persuaded to purchase $1,000 of stock in Hunt’s company, and called upon Bracken to urge the leadership of Union Pacific to “subscribe for a certain amount of this stock.” In doing so, Bracken argued that the proposed hotel would be as good as the Desert Inn in Palm Springs.51 Hunt limited the chances for a successful hotel project by setting a short time-line for the sale of stock; sales had to reach $150,000 by 14 January 1929, along with an additional $400,000 “arranged for by issuance of bonds or otherwise.”52 A number of other reasons were at play in this failure. First, Carl Gray, president of the Union Pacific, refused to commit the rail line to the purchase of stock in Hunt’s company, believing that he could not justify anything “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 55

George Wingfield, center, was a wealthy and powerful Reno banker who had recently opened the Riverside Hotel and was briefly interested in building a hotel in Las Vegas. (Fred and Maurine Wilson Photo Collection, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)

beyond giving the acreage he had offered to Richmond and Riley. Second, some potential supporters backed out because of the location of the proposed hotel on Hunt’s acreage. Senator Key Pittman, whom James Cashman sought to persuade to buy stock in the company, argued that a hotel a mile and a half south of the business district of Las Vegas would not appeal to tourists.53 Third, and certainly most important, was the entry of George Wingfield into the hotel situation in Las Vegas, a move that undercut Hunt’s initiative. Wingfield’s biographer has called him “Nevada’s principal capitalist” in the 1920s. He had made a fortune in banks, mining, and hotels, notably the impressive $750,000 Riverside Hotel in Reno, which he built both for the tourist trade and to attract people seeking to establish residence in Nevada for a divorce.54 56 Larry Dale Gragg

On December 29, “Pop” Squires reported that Wingfield had paid Roy Martin $30,000 for four lots at Second and Fremont, and that Wingfield intended to build “a modern fireproof hotel to cost approximately half a million dollars.” Squires could scarcely restrain himself in reporting that “the foremost citizen of the state” had become interested in southern Nevada.55 Indeed, Wingfield explained to Walter Bracken that he would consult with Gilbert Underwood and planned to build a hundred-fifty-room commercial hotel costing between $575,000 and $600,000.56 Wingfield was responding to the announcement on December 21, 1928, that President Calvin Coolidge had signed the long-debated Boulder Canyon Project Act; Wingfield was undoubtedly expecting that a brisk tourist business would develop as the massive dam construction project got underway.57 Press releases about his intention to build a hotel in Las Vegas produced a flood of inquiries to Wingfield from people seeking positions as hotel manager, hostess, architect, engineer, or housekeeper, and from dealers in lumber, furniture, wall paper, elevators, marble, cement, appliances, and air-conditioners. Inquiries came from all the western states and as far away as Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, and New York.58 However, E. A. Julian, Wingfield’s engineer and general manager of several of his operations, could never propose a cost-per-room for the hotel that met Wingfield’s satisfaction. Starting at about $3,500 per room, Julian whittled it down to $2,400, but that would mean they would have to “cheapen the specifications” and eliminate air-conditioning. Unable to get the costs “down to where I would want to build it or not,” Wingfield decided to shut down the project, a decision that caused great angst in Las Vegas. It “was quite a shock” to Bracken, who wrote to Wingfield explaining that his decision “is going to be an awful blow to not only Las Vegas, but to all of southern Nevada.”59 As the Wingfield initiative was collapsing, yet another proposal came forward, and it involved a familiar face. Frank Riley had joined with the California developer T. J. Lawrence to announce in late February 1929 the most expansive of the proposals of the 1920s. Lawrence, who had been behind the Morro Bay Vista development in that waterfront community in San Luis Obispo County, envisioned the purchase of more than five thousand acres. As Riley explained to the Chamber of Commerce in March 1929, Lawrence promised a resort hotel on fifty acres, a golf course on a hundred and twenty acres, “200 acres for homesites” and “250 acres for one of the finest airports in the United States.”60 In spring 1929, Lawrence took out full-page ads in the Las Vegas Age promoting a homebuilding district and a modern business district, and bought a full page “Open Letter” extolling the investment opportunities in Las Vegas. He also hired the publicist Willis Owen to do a radio program in southern California promoting both the town and Lawrence’s speculative land development called “Las Vegas and Artesian Park Estates.”61 The Lawrence proposal proved as ephemeral as all the rest, even though as late as October 1929, Frank Riley wrote to Bracken that “Lawrence and “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 57 associates” had formed “an investment corporation known as ‘Paramount Investment Corporation’ with an authorized capital of approximately $5,000,000.” Forty percent would be used to develop their Las Vegas properties, including their “proposed ‘Desert Hotel’ and its adjuncts.” They also expressed a hope to build a commercial hotel on Fremont Street and were exploring the purchase of Wingfield’s lots.62 Yet as with Richmond in 1927, Riley and Lawrence’s proposal disappeared from the scene. With the recently approved state open-gaming law in mind, Bracken wrote to Wingfield in March 1931 saying that perhaps the best chance of success for a large hotel in Las Vegas would be a “commercial hotel with casino attached.”63 However, within days of Bracken’s letter, Leigh Hunt, after putting together yet another syndicate of investors and supporters (including Charles Baad of the Biltmore chain, Gilbert Underwood, and R. B. Robertson), released a statement reflecting the frustrations of the past several years: “After a long struggle and many disappointments, due largely to wasted time and energy on promoters of big claims and little substance, I am finally in a position to tell my Las Vegas friends that we shall have a first class hotel.” He planned a two-hundred-room structure on Seventh and Fremont streets. It would have served a clientele similar to that of the famed Riverside Hotel in Reno, notably, as “Pop” Squires explained the next day, those seeking to establish a six-weeks residence in Nevada for a divorce.64 Hunt’s supporters traveled to Las Vegas in late April 1931 to view the hotel site and then drove out to the Boulder Dam construction site. However, according to Hunt’s biographer, “the car was enveloped in one of the worst dust storms to hit the area in years. As the dirt and sand beat against the window of the luxurious vehicle, its occupants came to the conclusion that $750,000 was too much money to risk on a tourist hotel in Las Vegas.”65 At this point, as the Depression deepened, Hunt gave up. As his secretary, Walter Hunsaker, explained two years later, “We have given up the attempt to secure a tourist hotel during these trying times.”66 There were other abortive hotel schemes. In early 1929, construction began on the Egyptian Ambassador Hotel. However, the fifty-three-room structure on Fremont Street never materialized. Nor did a $300,000 project promoted by a developer named Ninen Talbott. In spring 1931, Talbott announced plans to build either a six-story downtown hotel or one “in the outskirts,” one that would be “Spanish in type, spreading over a considerable area.”67 Still, some entrepreneurs opened smaller hotels in these years. For example, A. H. McDonald opened the thirty-nine-room McDonald Hotel on Fifth Street downtown in spring 1929, and three years later P. O. Silvagni opened the three- story Apache Hotel with sixty rooms (later expanded to one hundred rooms), casino, coffee shop, and café on Fremont Street.68 There was also a promising development in early 1931. Frank and Louis Cornero opened the Meadows in May, just outside the city limits, on the Boulder Highway. Besides their casino and nightclub, the Corneros’ property had twenty-five guest rooms, and there 58 Larry Dale Gragg

were plans to add sixty more, along with tennis courts and a swimming pool. Remarkably, Alex Richmond, who had led the first major initiative to build a resort hotel in Las Vegas, purchased the hotel portion of the Meadows, but a fire destroyed that section of the property shortly afterwards.69 There are multiple reasons for these consistent failures. First, the Union Pacific never offered substantial financial support for any of the proposed resort hotels. At the most, railroad officials offered land worth about $15,000 and added about $25,000 for landscaping. They consistently declined to purchase any shares of the stock offerings. Indeed, Frank Robinson, the traffic vice- president for Union Pacific, in response to proposals by Frank Riley in 1928, wrote that the Union Pacific would “have nothing to do with any stock selling scheme,” and he also made it clear “that we have no interest or responsibility of any kind in this matter other than the mere development of facilities by responsible parties along our lines.”70 The railroad, despite pressure from the Las Vegas press and Chamber of Commerce and sixty-eight agents along their lines who asked the Union Pacific to build a “Desert Hotel,” did not have much confidence in the prospects in the small desert community. They chose instead to commit $600,000 for a lodge on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.71 Second, while the Las Vegas newspapers usually presented a unified front among community leaders in their quest for a resort hotel, there were divisions. In 1931, “Pop” Squires argued, “The thing most detrimental to the advancement of Las Vegas at this particular time is the inclination of a small, but loud minority, to knock everybody and every proposal at first sight.”72 Reno’s powerful financier George Wingfield concurred, although he overstated the case. His limited investment experience in Las Vegas persuaded him that it was a town torn by “cheap, petty larceny politics,” a place where factions were willing to “cut each other’s throats for any petty advantage that they may gain temporarily.”73 For example, in 1926, during their negotiations with Alex Richmond, Union Pacific officials learned that Leigh Hunt had offered the developer some of his land. Determined to have the resort hotel near the Union Pacific ranch, traffic manager R. B. Robertson instructed Walter Bracken not to tell Hunt about their discussions with Richmond.74 Third, while a few men like Leigh Hunt could afford to invest a considerable sum in a proposed resort hotel, most Las Vegans could not, and the leading financial institution in the community offered no help. The First State Bank, whose president was the powerful and conservative Ed Clark, did not have the capacity to fund the construction of a large hotel, and, more important, was not inclined to help. Frank Riley discovered that fact in 1928 when he met with Clark “to see if it is possible to interest the Bank in their project.” He quickly discovered that Clark and his bank directors decided that it “cannot be done.”75 Out-of-state financial institutions were even more hesitant, if that were possible, to invest in a resort hotel project in Las Vegas, as Alex Richmond discovered when he met with one California bank’s board. It saw the idea “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 59 of a resort hotel in Las Vegas “as pioneering and not compatible with the bank’s reputation.”76 This was an obvious reference to the perceptions that people outside of Nevada had of the state. For two decades journalists had portrayed Las Vegas and the state as a locale with all the vices associated with real and imagined Wild West towns. Many magazine articles (including one in Nation by Anne Martin, a native of Nevada who became a leader in the women’s suffrage movement) demonstrated that Americans tended to see the state as “wild and wooly” with its drinking, gambling, prize fights, legalized prostitution, and easy acceptance of divorce.77 Duncan Aikman was typical among the journalists who visited Las Vegas in the 1920s and early 1930s in writing that Nevada residents had yet to acknowledge “that the old West ever died.” He argued that the illegal gambling and saloons he found in Las Vegas in 1930 were important “in a frontier civilization where the cowboys and the prospectors still ride down from the hills for a few days’ or a few weeks’ fling at boisterous town life.”78 As one developer explained to Union Pacific officials, “The financial houses here do not look upon Nevada as inviting territory for bond underwritings and fear great sales resistance to such an issue.”79 It likely was the negative narratives about Las Vegas, for example, that prompted Leigh Hunt to eliminate casinos from his proposals. More worrisome to bond companies and banks than the critiques of personal morality in Las Vegas were the raft of stories about the extraordinary boom in the town in 1929 following the federal government’s decision to construct a massive dam on the Colorado River just a little more than thirty miles away from Las Vegas. Headlines were not encouraging: “Las Vegas Goes Land Crazy as Dam Boom Hits” and “Great Land Frauds at Boulder Dam.” Speculators and scam artists descended upon the small town driving up property prices by more than 50 percent in just a few weeks. Journalists regaled readers with stories of real-estate promoters they called “landsharks,” “real estate sharks,” and “a pack of get-rich-quick swindlers,” who were selling essentially worthless lots to “a gullible public.”80 None of this frenetic activity encouraged financial institutions to invest substantial amounts into resort-hotel proposals in such a volatile situation. Fourth, long-time Las Vegas residents blamed the integrity of the developers like Alex Richmond and Frank Riley rather than the circumstances in their community. Marion Earl argued that most of the developers were unwilling to take the requisite risks involved in launching the first resort hotel in the community. “The chamber got many propositions,” he explained, “to build a resort hotel but from promoters who wanted them to give the promoter the land, buy stocks, loan them money—in short everything that was necessary to build a hotel.”81 The journalist John Cahlan, whose brother so strongly supported the ventures of the 1920s in his Las Vegas Review, agreed. “They’d come in,” he recollected, “with these grand ideas and maybe sell stock and light out, or maybe they’d just fade out in the distance.”82 60 Larry Dale Gragg

The El Rancho Vegas, which opened in 1941, was the kind of resort hotel that many of the early promoters hoped to establish. (Manis Collection, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections)

These factors, made worse by the challenging circumstances of the national depression, continued as barriers to the building of a resort hotel in Las Vegas through the 1930s. Developers still pondered, and then promoted, the idea of a desert resort in or just outside Las Vegas. The most notable effort came from a San Diego group headed by Harry Wiesler and involved the promotion of a hotel project they called El Sonador to be constructed on eight-hundred-eighty acres three miles from Las Vegas on the Boulder Highway. For four years beginning in 1936, Wiesler’s group struggled and then failed to raise enough money to build the hotel.83 It took the perseverance of Tom Hull finally to open a resort hotel in Las Vegas. The owner of two El Rancho hotels in California, Hull was the first to raise the requisite funding for a resort, perhaps because his scheme was more modest. His 1941 El Rancho Vegas had only sixty-six rooms, fewer than half the number of rooms of the proposed hotel projects of the 1920s.84 The success of the El Rancho Vegas demonstrated the feasibility of the resort-hotel concept in Las Vegas and vindicated the promises made by the developers of the 1920s—notably Leigh Hunt—that the desert town could become a competitive resort destination. “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 61

Notes

1“$750,000 Vegas Hotel Assured,” Las Vegas Evening Review and Journal (30 March 1931), p. 1. 2“$500,000 Tourist Hotel for Las Vegas,” Las Vegas Age (13 March 1926), p. 1; “Los Angeles to Have New Hotel,” Riverside (California) Daily Press (16 December 1925), sec. II, p. 1. 3Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), 122. This classic study is always a good place to begin the study of western resort hotels. Promoters in Las Vegas distinguished between the resort or tourist hotel and the commercial hotel. They expected the former to attract the casual traveler and the latter the business traveler. 4“W. A. Clark’s New Hotel,” Salt Lake Tribune (25 September 1904), p. 14. 5“Whittemore Promises,” Las Vegas Age (2 September 1905), p. 1; “Las Vegas in 1906,” Las Vegas Age (23 December 1922), p. 2. 6“Make Las Vegas the Metropolis of Nevada,” Las Vegas Age (19 January 1918), p. 1. 7Squires quoted in Eugene P. Moehring, “Town Making on the Southern Nevada Frontier: Las Vegas, 1905-1925,” in History and Humanities: Essays in Honor of Wilbur S. Shepperson, Francis X. Hartigan, ed. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1989), 100-101. 8Eugene P. Moehring and Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: A Centennial History (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2005), 57; Eric Nystrom, “Labor Strife in Las Vegas: The Union Pacific Shopmen’s Strike of 1922,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 44:4 (Winter 2001); 314. The Union Pacific purchased the San Pedro, Los Angeles, & Salt Lake Railroad in 1921. See “Union Pacific Co. Official Here on Inspection Tour,” Las Vegas Age (9 July 1921), p. 1. 9Russell R. Elliott, History of Nevada, 2 ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 262-63. 10Corkhill quoted in Moehring, “Town Making,” 98. 11The best secondary account of the strike is Nystrom, “Labor Strife in Las Vegas,” 313-32. Also, see C. M. Hoffman telegram to W. H. Comstock, 25 September 1922, http://digital.library. unlv.edu/u?/snv,4083 and N. A. Williams to E. E. Calvin, 24 October 1922, http://digital.library. unlv.edu/u?/snv, 4091; Southern Nevada: The Boomtown Years, Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; “U.P. Head Requests Troops for Las Vegas,” Las Vegas Age (5 August 1922), p. 1; “Echo from Strike Two Years Ago at U.P. Shops,” Las Vegas Age (5 April 1924), p. 1; “Governor Promotes Peaceful Conditions,” Las Vegas Age (19 August 1922), p. 1; “State Police Called Back to Carson City,” Las Vegas Age (2 December 1922), p. 5; and “Las Vegas Striker Aims Gun at Nevada Governor,” Reno Evening Gazette (14 August 1922), p. 1; and “Las Vegas Asks That Police Remain There,” Nevada State Journal (31 October 1922), p. 8. 11Nystrom, “Labor Strife in Las Vegas,” 321. 13Ibid., 330. 14Chamber of Commerce to Carl R. Gray, (2 October 1925), Union Pacific Collection, Box 9, Folder 11, Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (hereafter cited as Special Collections, UNLV). 15John F. Cahlan, Fifty Years in Journalism and Community Development, Jamie Coughtry, ed. (Reno: Oral History Program, University of Nevada, 1987), 86, 94. Also, see Brad Peterson, “John Beville Banked on ‘Crummiest Little Town,’” Nevadan (26 August 1979), p. J30. 16Ralph J. Roske, Las Vegas: A Desert Paradise (Tulsa: Continental Heritage Press, 1986), 69-70; Eugene P. Moehring, Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas, 1930-2000, 2d ed. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2000), 10-11. 17“Las Vegas Real Estate Is Moving Rapidly,” Las Vegas Age (26 February 1921), p. 1. 18Robert D. McCracken, Las Vegas: The Great American Playground (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1997), 30. 19Kathleen L. Howard and Diana F. Pardue, Inventing the Southwest: The Fred Harvey Company and Native American Art (Flagstaff: Northland Publishing Company, 1996); Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identify, 1880-1940 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001); Stephen Fried, Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West (New York: Bantam Books, 2010); Hal K. Rothman, Devil’s Bargain: Tourism in the Twentieth-century American West (Lawrence: University 62 Larry Dale Gragg

Press of Kansas, 1998); Christopher Wilson, The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997); Victoria E. Dye, All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005); Greg Niemann, Palm Springs Legends: Creation of a Desert Oasis (San Diego: Sunbelt Publications, 2006); Lawrence Culver, The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Alan Hess and Andrew Danish, Palm Springs Weekend: The Architecture and Design of a Midcentury Oasis (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001); Bradford Luckingham, Phoenix: The History of a Southwestern Metropolis (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994). 20Alfred Runte, “Promoting Wonderland: Western Railroads and the Evolution of National Park Advertising,” Railroads in the American West (January 1992), 45. Also, see Maury Klein, Union Pacific: The Rebirth 1894-1969 (New York: Doubleday, 1989), and Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes, Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-century West (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). 21Walter Bracken, telegram to C. C. Barry, 24 September 1926, Union Pacific Railroad Collection, Special Collections, UNLV, Box 7, Folder 12. 22“An Auspicious Event,” Las Vegas Review (17 September 1926), p. 2. Also, see Chamber of Commerce Minutes, 6 May 1924, and 13 October 1925, pp. 255, 314, Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Records, Box 1, Folder 3, Special Collections, UNLV. 23“$500,000 Tourist Hotel for Las Vegas;” “Los Angeles to Have New Hotel;” “Arrowhead Lodge, New Hotel for Lake Arrowhead, in Arrowhead Woods,” Riverside (California) Enterprise (22 September 1922), p. 6; and “Booming Southern Nevada,” Nevada State Journal (16 March 1926), p. 4. 24C. E. Miller to Walter Bracken, 23 January 1926, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV; “Vegas Chamber of Commerce in Busy Session,” Las Vegas Review (29 January 1926), p. 1. 25“$500,000 Tourist Hotel for Las Vegas.” 26 “An Auspicious Event,” p. 2. 27R. B. Robertson to Walter Bracken, 22 July 1926, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV; “$500,000 Vegas Hotel Sure; To Start in 60 Days,” Las Vegas Review (14 September 1926), p. 1. 28Walter Bracken to R. B. Robertson, 28 July 1926; Walter Bracken to E. E. Calvin, 14 August 1926; Walter Bracken to R. B. Robertson, 17 September 1926; Walter Bracken to E. E. Calvin, 9 October 1926; and R. B. Robertson to Walter Bracken, 22 July 1926, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV; Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Minutes, 12 April 1927, p. 377. 29For Scrugham’s economic development efforts see Paul Robert Bruno, “Governor James G. Scrugham and the Search for Economic Prosperity for Nevada, 1923-1927” (M.A. thesis, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2009). 30Draft Act, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 31Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Minutes, 28 December 1926, p. 363; “Transfer of Hotel Land Authorized,” Las Vegas Review (7 January 1927), p. 1. 32Walter Bracken to E. E. Calvin, 9 October 1926, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 33“New Hotel Now in Reality Realm,” Las Vegas Review (26 March 1926), p. 1; “Richmond Pressing New Hotel Work,” Las Vegas Age (16 April 1927), p. 1; “Richmond Renews $600,000 Hotel Promise,” Las Vegas Review (26 April 1927), p. 1. 34“Ninety Day Extension Hotel Time,” Las Vegas Review (13 May 1927), p. 1; Walter Bracken to E. E. Calvin, (12 August 1927), Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 35“Special Session in Hotel Site Transfer Possible,” Las Vegas Review (16 November 1926), p. 1; “Richmond Hotel Project Is Settled,” Las Vegas Age (12 February 1927), p. 1. 36Walter Bracken to E. E. Calvin, 15 October 1927, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. Richmond remained interested in Las Vegas. When he learned in early 1929 that George Wingfield had bought prime land on Fremont Street with the intention of building an hotel, Richmond wrote to the powerful and wealthy Nevadan hoping to become the new property’s manager. “I notice … that you are building a hotel in Las Vegas,” he wrote, “and I would like to know if there is any possibility of me getting hold of it.” See A. L. Richmond “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 63 to George Wingfield, 11 January 1929, George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Box 86, Nevada Historical Society, Reno. 37E. E. Calvin to A. L. Richmond, 7 November 1927, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 38Laurance B. Rand, High Stakes: The Life and Times of Leigh S. J. Hunt (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 1-263. 39Ibid. The quotation is from page 265. 40Elwood Lloyd IV, Preliminary Trip Report: Boulder Canyon Dam Basin, 1923, p. 9, Walter S. Hunsaker Collection, Box 2, Folder II/1/18, Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno (hereafter cited as Special Collections, UNR). 41Florence Lee Jones, “Las Vegan Living Quietly Here Has Distinction of Being First White Women to Enter Northern Korea,” undated newspaper clipping in Walter S. Hunsaker Collection, Box 2, Folder II/1/4, and Walter S. Hunsaker to Laurance Rand, undated, Walter S. Hunsaker Collection, Box 2, Folder II/1/4, both in Special Collections, UNR. 42Harriman and Company Accounts, Walter S. Hunsaker Collection, Box 2, Folder II/1/13; Christopher Karb to Leigh Hunt, 13 March 1928, Walter S. Hunsaker Collection, Box 2, Folder II/1/9, both in Special Collections, UNR. “Large Real Estate Deals Feature Week,” Las Vegas Age (22 November 1924), p. 1; Jane Ann Morrison, “Leigh Hunt Bet on Las Vegas More Than 50 Years Ago,” Nevadan (11 September 1977), p. 3J; and Rand, High Stakes, 266-81. 43Walter S. Hunsaker to Laurance Rand, 7 May 1981, and Walter S. Hunsaker to Laurance Rand, undated letter, Walter S. Hunsaker Collection, Box 2, Folder II/1/4, Morrison, “Leigh Hunt,”both in Special Collections, UNR; 4J. 44Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Minutes, 17 January 1928, p. 407. 45“New Outlook for Hotel Project More Favorable,” Las Vegas Age (28 January 1928), p. 1. 46Tentative Agreement Reached for $700,000 Hotel Project,” Las Vegas Review (16 March 1928), p. 1; “Hotel Deal Agreed Upon by Cleveland Men,” Las Vegas Review (11 April 1928), p. 1; Walter Bracken to E. E. Calvin, 15 June 1928; Synopsis of Boulder Canyon Properties, Inc., Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. The inclusion of a casino indicates that Riley was aware of the growing sentiment in the state for wide-open gambling. See, for example, “Wide-Open Gambling Act Passage Thought Possible,” Las Vegas Review (25 February 1927), p. 1. 47Joyce Zaitlin, Gilbert Stanley Underwood: His Rustic, Art Deco, and Federal Architecture (Malibu, Calif.: Pangloss Press, 1989), 12, 14, 24, 169, 173; “Half-Million-Dollar Hotel Designed to Make Yosemite Year-Round Resort,” San Diego Union (8 August 1926), Development Section, p. 11. 48“Hotel Project,” Las Vegas Age (31 July 1928), p. 2. 49F. H. Knickerbocker to E. E. Calvin, 8 October 1928, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 50Leigh Hunt to Roy Martin, Walter Bracken, and James Cashman, 20 October 1928, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 51Rand, High Stakes, 272; Walter Bracken to C. R. Gray, 23 October 1928, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 52Rand, High Stakes, 272. 53C. R. Gray to Walter Bracken, 26 October 1928, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV; Key Pittman to James Cashman, 17 January 1929, Key Pittman Personal Correspondence, Box 45, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 54C. Elizabeth Raymond, George Wingfield: Owner and Operator of Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1992), 115, 116, 124, 127, 130, 132, 142. 55“Wingfield Buys Business Property,” Las Vegas Age (29 December 1928), p. 1; Deed, George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Box 86, Nevada Historical Society, Reno; “Wingfield Here,” Las Vegas Age (29 December 1928), p. 2. 56George Wingfield to Walter Bracken, 30 January 1929, George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Box 86, Nevada Historical Society, Reno. 57“President Coolidge Signs Boulder Bill and Brings Long Fight to Conclusion,” Reno Evening Gazette (21 December 1928), p. 1; “C of C Head Sees Great Progress Now,” Las Vegas Review (21 December 1928), p. 1. 58The letters are in the George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Boxes 31 and 86, Nevada Historical Society, Reno. 64 Larry Dale Gragg

59E. A. Julian to George Wingfield, 21 January 1929, and E. A. Julian to George Wingfield, 11 March 1929, George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Box 86; George Wingfield to Walter Bracken, 31 May 1929, and Walter Bracken to George Wingfield, 7 June 1929, George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Box 31, Nevada Historical Society, Reno. 60“Morro Bay Booth Attracts Many of Fair’s Visitors,” Bakersfield (California) Morning Echo (10 October 1925), p. 5; “Lawrence Program Is of Tremendous Scope,” Las Vegas Age (26 March 1929), p. 1. 61“An Open Letter,” Las Vegas Age (27 April 1929), p. 6; “Story of Las Vegas Is First Told Over Radio,” Las Vegas Age (18 May 1929), p. 1. 62Frank Riley to Walter Bracken, 22 October 1929, George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Box 31, Nevada Historical Society, Reno. 63Walter Bracken to George Wingfield, 25 March 1931, George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Box 34, Nevada Historical Society, Reno. 64“$750,000 Vegas Hotel Assured,” Las Vegas Evening Review and Journal (30 March 1931), p. 1; “What It Means,” Las Vegas Age (31 March 1931), p. 2. Squires was referring to the recently passed shorter residence requirement for those seeking divorces in Nevada. See “Gaming, Divorce Bills Signed,” Nevada State Journal (20 March 1931), p. 1. 65Rand, High Stakes, 279; “Hotel Men in Vegas on Survey,” Las Vegas Evening Review Journal (22 May 1931), p. 1. 66Walter Hunsaker to Colorado River Exploration Co. Stockholders, 6 September 1933, Hunsaker Collection, Box 5, Folder II/8/1, Special Collections, UNR. 67“Building of New 53-Room Hotel Started on East Fremont Street,” Las Vegas Age 26 February 1931, p. 1; “Hotel to Cost $300,000 Will Be Built in Vegas States Woman Financier,” Las Vegas Age (13 May 1931), p. 1. 68“39-Room Hotel Finished Soon,” Las Vegas Age (28 May 1929), p. 1; “Martin Sells Fremont Lot for $60,000,” Las Vegas Age (15 May 1931), p. 1; and “Hotel Apache Opens Today,” Las Vegas Age (19 March 1932), p. 1. 69“The Meadows: Finest Casino in America,” Las Vegas Age (2 May 1931), p. 10; “The Meadows Formally Opens,” Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal (1 May 1931), p. 1; “The Meadows Hotel,” Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal (1 May 1931), p. 4; Roske, Las Vegas, 85. 70F. W. Robinson to R. B. Robertson, 25 June 1928, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 71Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Minutes, 3 January 1928, p. 406 and “U. P. Building Lodge for Canyon Tourists,” Evening (Omaha) World Herald (30 August 1927), p. 7. 72“Hotel Projects,” Las Vegas Age (13 May 1931), p. 2. 73George Wingfield to Walter Bracken, 24 January 1930, George Wingfield Correspondence and Records, Box 34, Nevada Historical Society, Reno. 74R. B. Robertson to Walter Bracken, 22 July 1926, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 75Walter Bracken to E. E. Calvin, 15 June 1928, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. As John Cahlan, one of his contemporaries, said about Clark, “you had to have gold behind you before he’d lend you money.” Clark “was very, very conservative—ultra- conservative.” See R. T. King, Hamie Caughtry, Guy L. Rocha, [Cahlan] Fifty Years in Journalism and Community Development (Oral History Series/Nevada Department of Museums and History), 1987, p. 325. 76A. L. Richmond to E. E. Calvin, 3 November 1927, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 77Anne Martin, “These United States—VIII, Nevada: Beautiful Desert of Buried Hopes,” Nation (26 July 1922), pp. 89-90. 78“New Pioneers in Old West’s Deserts,” New York Times (26 October 1930), pp. SM4 and 18; “Nevada Now Awaits Dam and Dry Regime,” Baltimore Sun (14 October 1930), p. 13. 79A. L. Richmond to E. E. Calvin, 3 November 1927, Union Pacific Collection, Box 7, Folder 12, Special Collections, UNLV. 80James Adam, “Las Vegas Goes Land Crazy as Dam Boom Hits,” Coshocton (OH) Tribune (10 January 1929), p. 5; Max Stern, “Great Land Frauds at Boulder Dam,” Sheboygan (WI) Press (18 April 1929), p. 24; Ben S. Lemmon, “Lot Sales Keep Las Vegas Busy,” Los Angeles (CA) Times (23 “A Long Struggle and Many Disappointments” 65

January 1929), p. 6; Magner White, “The Boom at Boulder,” Saturday Evening Post (23 March 1929), p. 146; “On the Boom,” Salt Lake (UT) Tribune (25 February 1929), p. 6. 81Marion Earl interview, 1972, Perry Kaufman Collection, Box 2, Interview Folder, Special Collections, UNLV. 82John F. Caplan, Fifty Years in Journalism and Community Development, an oral history (Oral History Series/Nevada Department of Museums and History), 1987, p. 129. 83See Larry Gragg, “El Sonador and the Struggle to Develop Resort Hotels in Las Vegas in the 1930s,” Nevada in the West (Spring 2015), pp. 4-9. 84David G. Schwartz, “The Columbus of Highway 91,” Vegas Seven (8 November 2012), http://vegasseven.com/2012/11/08/columbus-highway-91/. 66

Notes & Documents Noble Getchell: “Mr. Republican” During Nevada’s New Deal

James W. Hulse

Noble Getchell (1875-1960) was one of the last of Nevada’s frontier entrepreneurs to appear on the stage of the “hard-rock” mining industry and to aspire to the title of political statesman and benefactor. He blended a career of acting, mining, and politics, and left a memoir to prove it. He was a close friend of George Wingfield during the Republican ascendancy of the 1920s and the hard times of the 1930s. Getchell remained a stalwart conservative Republican to the end of his long life. His name was attached to the building that served as the main library at the University of Nevada, Reno, from 1962 until 2008, but his reputation in those circles was not high. It is widely assumed that he promised and then reneged on a large gift to the university. This article explores the background of these circumstances. Getchell’s time in Nevada spanned more than seventy-five years. As a boy about seven years old, he first came to the mining town of Austin in the 1880s with his father. After thirty years of rambling throughout the West and practicing many trades, he settled in this state in 1919 to take over a mine near Battle Mountain. He died in Reno on February 10, 1960. His mines made him a millionaire during the 1920s and then again late in the 1930s, when few hard-rock entrepreneurs made even a grubstake in the shafts. His autobiographical memoir offers a baseline for this story.

James W. Hulse is a retired professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the author of several books and articles on Nevada. Notes and Documents 67

Noble Getchell. (Nevada Historical Society)

Near the end of his life, Getchell allowed Florence Burge, then a correspondent for the Reno Evening Gazette, to write down his recollections. She edited and refined his story, then deposited the results in the Special Collections division of the University of Nevada Library in Reno. His memoir is titled From Grease Paint to Gold: The Life of Noble Hamilton Getchell. It was completed in March of 1958, about two years before his death.1 The Getchell narrative follows the pattern of the Horatio Alger novellas of the late nineteenth century: The lad begins life in poverty, works hard, is honest and helps others. Ultimately he becomes rich and has a happy, prosperous life. It is an account laced with melodramatic prose and entertaining anecdotes. Few of us have Horatio Alger on our reading lists these days, but Getchell (or perhaps Florence Burge) must have had, because his oral history reflects that style. The story comes to us in third-person prose, not as a first-person narrative, with extensive quotations from himself and his contemporaries. This device may—or may not—have been imposed by his editor for dramatic effect. 68

Born in Oakland in 1875, Getchell had a rambling childhood. His mother died soon after his birth, and his father had little to do with raising the boy. He spent some of his youthful years in New England before returning to Nevada with his father. As a man in his eighties, Getchell remembered being in Austin when he was about seven years of age, in 1882. The father had an interest in the Betty O’Neal mine, a marginal silver prospect near Battle Mountain that had yielded little profitable ore in the post-bonanza era. Discovered in 1880, it closed two years later because of a disastrous explosion. Low prices for silver ore made it impractical for investors to reopen, but his father kept an option on the mine. The Getchell autobiography tells of his wanderings as a young man, making a marginal living as a miner, assayer, saloon keeper, house painter, paper hanger, and fixer of tires in the early days of the automobile. His rambles took him through the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, the Rocky Mountain states, and to Arizona, Chicago, and Hollywood. He performed in vaudeville shows when they were available (hence the “Grease Paint” reference in the title of his memoir). Making a living was not easy, but it was fun. Although he had been estranged from his father through most of their lives, Noble Getchell remembered exciting talk about the riches of the Betty O’Neal mine; it was etched on his memory for the rest of his life. When he returned to Nevada in about 1920 after his father’s death, he took control of the Betty O’Neal, reopened the long-neglected shafts and tunnels, and built a flotation mill.2 Within a few years, the ore extracted from that site made Getchell a member of Nevada’s financial and political oligarchy; he presumably became a millionaire. Getchell was elected to the Nevada State Senate from Lander County in 1922, only two years after he re-opened the Betty O’Neal. Re-elected four times, he served through ten sessions, from 1923 through 1941. He was proud of having protected the mining industry from higher taxes proposed in the state legislature. He became Republican National Committeeman from Nevada and a passionate supporter of Herbert Hoover. Nevada’s political and economic history is speckled with debate about how much taxation the mining industry can and should pay. How should mines be taxed? How much should they yield to the public for the wealth they extract from the earth? Getchell was in the forefront of those who believed that the precious metals belong to those who own the mine, taxation of such resources should be kept to a minimum, and subsidies should be paid by the governments to mine developers. In this respect he was in the tradition of William Morris Stewart, Nevada's most famous United States senator of the nineteenth century. He promoted a new state highway and a branch railroad line from the Southern Pacific into the Betty O’Neal region. In the mid 1920s, Getchell became owner and publisher of the local newspaper, The Battle Mountain Scout, which promoted his interests. Notes and Documents 69

When the Great Depression of the 1930s came, mining as Getchell knew it went bust. He, like his friend George Wingfield whom he had met in Goldfield thirty years earlier, saw his financial prospects evaporate. Wingfield, the unofficially recognized political and financial boss of Nevada, endured the failure of his banks and was forced into bankruptcy. Getchell, too, was in trouble, but he continued to explore and to grubstake prospectors.3 In Getchell’s narrative, the Horatio Alger spirit returns. Just when things are darkest, Noble spots a fascinating outcropping on a ledge while driving between Midas and Golconda, and he accidentally hears that some of his old prospector friends are working the claim. He cleverly concocts a scheme, buys in cheaply, and does the same with Southern Pacific railroad property nearby. He walks away with a bargain. Noble became the developer and promoter of the Getchell Mine in Humboldt County, one of the richest gold-tungsten-arsenic prospects in Nevada during the late 1930s and early 1940s. He brought into the partnership his old friend George Wingfield, who had a special relationship with Bernard Baruch, the giant financier from Wall Street. Together they assembled the financing to develop the Betty O’Neal.4 They believed the mine’s great value to be in its gold, but when the United States government became involved in World War II, it needed not gold, but tungsten and arsenic, both of which were by-products of the Getchell mine. So the mine remained open when most other gold mines were closed. Getchell’s self-satisfaction with these accomplishments unfolds before us in his narrative. We are invited to assume that he had a Midas touch, and that his Horatio Alger virtues accounted for his success. As a longtime Republican National Committeeman from Nevada, he served when each state had two members on the national committees. He was a dedicated partisan to the end of his life, and he opposed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which assumed that the government should help those in need. Getchell was an oligarch who believed that wealth flowed naturally to those who had the right combination of “luck and pluck” (to borrow from one of the titles of Horatio Alger’s numerous books). Near the end of his life, Noble Getchell promised a substantial amount of money to the University of Nevada in Reno. On the strength of this pledge, and prompted by his friend Newton Crumley of Elko, the university’s Board of Regents named the new library building—the largest on the campus at the time—for him. The Getchell Library was almost entirely financed by Nevada taxpayer money, but when it opened in 1962 it became a testimonial to Getchell’s memory and prospective money. But he had added several codicils to his will in the last few years, and very little money came from his estate to the university.5 70

A personal note may be appropriate here. When I was preparing to write the centennial history of the University of Nevada about forty years ago, I went to Arizona to interview Minard Stout, the former president of the university. Stout had been dismissed by the Board of Regents after a five-year (1952-57) tumultuous reign which brought much unfavorable publicity to himself and the regents. I interviewed Dr. Stout in his office at Arizona State University, and he reflected on his years at Nevada. He knew Getchell well and considered him a close friend. According to former-president Stout, Getchell told him that the university would get nothing from him when his estate was settled. In the final event, the university did receive a few thousand dollars, but the regents had already stamped Getchell’s name on the new library building. Stout took some belated satisfaction in the revelation that the university had been stiffed.

Let us finally give Getchell the benefit of the doubt. He was one of the last representatives of the hard-rock, itinerant, jack-of-all-trades miners who coaxed a substantial amount of precious metal from Nevada’s mountains. He did it in the 1920s and late 1930s, when mining was in the doldrums. He played with the big guns of Nevada politics—George Wingfield and Tasker Oddie—and the national Republicans. There are, of course, more recent claimants to the discovery of riches buried beneath the upper geological crust of Nevada. The Getchell mine is the site of some of Nevada’s recent massive gold production employing huge pits and heavy equipment. But Getchell did it the old-fashioned way at a time when mining was in the doldrums. He came along a generation or two later than the Comstock bonanza kings, and parlayed the Betty O’Neal and the Getchell mine experiences into a prominent place on the stage of Nevada mining history.

Notes

1From Grease Paint to Gold: The Life of Noble Hamilton Getchell, is available at the Special Collections Department of the University of Nevada, Reno, library. 2An example of Getchell’s promotion of the Betty O’Neal can be found in Nevada Mining Press, a weekly newspaper published in Reno; “Betty O’Neal Ranks as Big Bonanza Mine” (April 22, 1923). 3Cheryl Fox, “George Wingfield’s Comeback: The Getchell Mine, 1936-1945,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 32:2 (Summer 1989), 140-58). 4Elizabeth C. Raymond, George Wingfield: Owner and Operator of Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1992). 5 An astute analysis of Getchell’s intentions toward the university is available in Deidre Pike, “Great Intentions and Expectations,” Silver & Blue, University of Nevada, Reno (September 1995), pp. 10-11. 71

Book Reviews

The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada from the Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip. By Richard O. Davies (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2014)

Almost from the first, boxing and Nevada needed each other. The history of one is tied to the other; the success of the one linked to the success of the other; the shame of the one shared by the shame of the other. Nevada earned its shady reputation. Early in the twentieth century Reno was where a person went to obtain a quickie divorce, get drunk, gamble, and explore the borders of the thoroughly disrespectable, if not downright criminal. Boxing, as one authority admitted, has always been the red-light district of sports, illegal for much of its history, pathetically unregulated even when sanctioned by the law, and often controlled by entrepreneurs and mobsters whose ethics seldom rose to the standards of a carney-shell game operator. Yet at its best—which is sometimes also its worst—Nevada and boxing are marvelous, and even in its own way, noble. In The Main Event Richard O. Davies explores the relationship between Nevada and boxing, throwing light on the paradoxes of the state and sport. Boxing emerged as a commercialized spectator sport—though mostly an illegal one—in the late nineteenth century. Briefly in the 1890s politicians and promoters in New Orleans capitalized on the popularity of boxing and staged legal fights. The zenith of New Orleans boxing occurred on September 7, 1892, when some ten thousand spectators jammed into the city’s Olympic Club to watch James J. “Gentleman Jim” Corbett win the heavyweight crown by defeating the legendary John L. “The Boston Strong Boy” Sullivan. The contest was a financial success for the promoters, and a boon to local businesses. This was a good idea, concluded businessmen and politicians in Nevada at a time when the state was struggling through a lengthy and deep recession. In 1897 the state legislature approved “glove contests”—as opposed to bare knuckle fights—and the promoter Daniel Stuart brought a heavyweight-title contest between Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons to Carson City, Nevada. Critics called the match “Nevada’s disgrace,” and although the fight failed to attract many spectators, Stuart made a fine profit from the films of the fight. In the end, the combination of boxing, Nevada, and technology carried the day. Starting from that early match, Davies tells the seedy, fascinating story of boxing in Nevada, and he tells it exceedingly well. Along the way the state 72

story intersects with the country’s national narrative. The heavyweight contest between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries (Reno, 1910) underscored the racial tensions in America. Johnson’s victory ignited nationwide racial violence, resulting in the deaths and injuries to scores of Americans. Furthermore, during the 1940s and 1950s, when organized crime syndicates gained monopolistic control over professional boxing, the mob also extended its influence over gambling and casinos in Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada. The fact that Sonny Liston, who was controlled by the mob, eventually settled into Las Vegas was hardly surprising. After a lull for some decades, the modern courtship between Nevada and boxing began in 1955 when Jack “Doc” Kearns, one of the slickest operators in the history of the sport, promoted a fight between Archie Moore and Nino Valdez, two heavyweight contenders. Although the match was a bust at the box office, it demonstrated Nevada’s tolerant attitude toward a sport that was beginning to decline. More bouts followed, including a 1963 heavyweight title fight between Liston and Floyd Patterson. Soon Las Vegas had become the world center of boxing. Between 1960 and 2010 city leaders staged more than two-hundred championship matches. The reasons for the shift from New York to Las Vegas were partly internal; casino owners coveted the high-rollers that marquis fights attracted. But external factors also accounted for Las Vegas’s ascendency in the sport; the decline of televised boxing, ring deaths, and rise in popularity of other sports made pugilism less attractive. Davies covers the high and low points of the rise and decline (but never the fall) of boxing in Nevada and the United States. His ability to shift between the national and the state scenes and his mastery of the literature adds immeasurably to The Main Event, as does his blending of political, social, and economic forces. I finished the book wishing there was a similar treatment of boxing and New York. Together, the books would cover the history of prizefighting in America.

Randy Roberts Purdue University, Indiana Book Reviews 73

We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here: Work, Community, and Memory on California’s Round Valley Reservation, 1850-1941. By William J. Bauer, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009)

American Indians “are still here.” The author William J. Bauer, Jr., a member of the Wailacki and Concow nations, who grew up on the Round Valley Reservation, proves it through his own heritage and his own historical work. Bauer’s work on the American Indians at the Round Valley Reservation forms a continuation of micro-histories that demonstrate that native people were not just victims of Euro-American encroachment and repression, but were agents of change for their own survival. The trend in new American Indian history involves getting away from the “Dee Brown victimization theory” and shows how indigenous people of North America endure, and continue to maintain their cultural identities. Though the Euro-American ideal of Manifest Destiny overran much of the western nations’ lands, it did not extinguish American Indian perseverance or its culture. Bauer writes, “Rather than viewing Round Valley Indians as victims of economic change, work and labor become examples of Round Valley Indian agency, cultural adaptation, and survival” (p.8). He uses a variety of sources, including oral histories, to demonstrate how the nations on the Round Valley Reservation adapted and overcame to survive and continue to perpetuate their Native culture today. Though Bauer, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, demonstrates Native agency, he finds his work unique because of its inclusion of labor history. “This book straddles the fields of American labor history and American Indian history” (p.3). The work traces the history of labor from those in the nation who picked hops in the nineteenth century to present-day wage labor. Bauer argues that the tradition of agricultural labor easily allowed the Natives to appease white demands for it. This intervention on the part of white Americans, in contradiction to their intentions, actually led to the building of a stronger reservation community. This community then forms the basis for creating Native agency on the reservation. The Round Valley Reservation lies 180 miles north of San Francisco in the mountains of Northern California. It is a conglomeration of nations placed on Yuki lands. Besides the Yuki, the nations include the Concow Maidu, Little Lake, Pomo, Nomlaki, Cahto, Wailaki, and Pit River peoples. Bauer spends his first chapter on pre-white contact to give a basis of the nations that make up the Round Valley Reservation. These nations went peacefully, as did most American Indians, on to the reservation in the mid-nineteenth century at the time of the California Gold Rush. Throughout the next few decades the Natives farmed, but when food supplies fell short they used their resources, such as off-reservation hops picking, to feed their families. Despite the fact that hops were used for alcohol, the success of the crop led reservation agents to harvest it at Round Valley. Bauer notes the reservation’s administration, or 74

lack of, reflects the many struggles of reservation Indians of the era. However, the Round Valley Natives adapted. When whites failed to supply all families equally, those on the reservation refused to work until provisions were redistributed equitably. After the passage of the Dawes Act (1887), Round Valley families struggled and never really adapted to farming personal land plots. They continued to work for wages, maintained the familial connections, and kept their communal leisure activities. They did not become yeoman farmers. Though designated “poor” in the late nineteenth century by most outsiders, the Round Valley Natives did not judge their success based on material goods or electrical service, but by the amount of food the nation had to eat, which often was well beyond subsistence. The early twentieth century history follows much of America’s history of boom and bust. These American Indians served in World War I, worked for New Deal programs, and developed splits over religion. Near the end of the work, Bauer, who grew up on the Round Valley Reservation and paid his way through Notre Dame hauling hay there, uniquely uses his own family to demonstrate not only Native agency, but the dichotomy of assimilation versus adaptation. Though only one amongst many, his family’s personal story makes a poignant historical point and serves not only the academic audience, but those in the community at Round Valley. It also adds a private touch that will draw the reader’s interest away from the academic style that is the norm of the field. Though the reviewer is skeptical about how much historical impact the study of such a small community in a remote area can have on the larger historiography, the work nevertheless makes its own path that some, especially those with experiences similar to Dr. Bauer’s, should follow.

Scott L. Stabler, Ph.D Grand Valley State University, Michigan Book Reviews 75

How Cities Won the West. By Carl Abbott (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008)

This book’s title is somewhat misleading; only a few small sections deal with how cities helped the United States conquer the West. Rather, the volume is rather an interpretive history of how cities shaped and empowered the West from the Spanish Conquest to the present. While many of the themes are familiar to readers of the author’s 1998 classic, The Metropolitan Frontier, this book is far more than an extension of that work. More than any of Abbott’s previous publications, this volume reflects his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. Abbott’s insightful approach to western cities is reflected in a variety of ways throughout the book. Take, for instance, his discussion of the “horizontal” and “vertical” growth of cities. While we are all knowledgeable about the slow, horizontal growth of Reno and Spokane into small metropolitan areas, non-specialists might be less familiar with the significant “vertical” growth of Boise, especially in electronics and “international engineering,” which has enhanced the West’s vital position in the global economy. On a related front, Abbott’s explanations regarding why one city over time passed a nearby rival in size and population are interesting and informative. He does this for Portland and Seattle, Salt Lake City and Denver, Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, and many other pairs. Nevada readers will appreciate the coverage awarded to tourism as a dynamic factor in diversifying urban economies as well as in transforming rural areas located within a few hours drive of a metropolis into “weekendlands” for overworked urbanites. He particularly emphasizes how city dwellers’ need for recreation changed landscapes even hundreds of miles away. These are the “fly- in communities” designed both for retirees and “time flexible” metropolitan workers who flock to “lifestyle enclaves” such as Moab and Telluride. In the Silver State, Lake Tahoe functions in a similar way for Bay Area and Sacramento residents. Abbott observes that some of these places sprawl for 20-30 miles in “mini conurbations” (p.252) like the Kalispell/Whitefish/Columbia Falls complex just west of Glacier National Park, much like the rim and hillside towns overlooking Lake Tahoe. One might add that the same holds true for Las Vegas and southern Utah’s chalet forest towns off Interstate 15. An interesting extension of this theme is Abbott’s notion about how the “urban West” routinely appropriates the “empty West” (p.155)—the wilderness and rural areas between cities—for various functions including leisure and recreational activities. Abbott’s discussion of country lodge resorts in the Cascades that target opulent Portlanders reminds one of a similar contribution made by Nevada’s casino border towns—Primm (for the Los Angeles area), Laughlin (for Phoenix), Wendover (for Salt Lake), Jackpot (for Boise/Twin Falls), and even Mesquite (for weary Las Vegans). Of particular interest to eastern Nevadans concerned about the long shadow cast by Las Vegas over their aquifers is the discussion of how Denver, 76

Portland, and other cities historically have reached out in imperial fashion for more water. Abbott matter-of-factly portrays Los Angeles’s and San Francisco’s grab for interior water as part of the natural process undertaken by every metropolitan “organism” to secure food, oil, natural gas, and other supplies needed to sustain the “urban metabolism” (p.153). He reviews the San Francisco/Hetch Hetchy and Los Angeles/Owens Valley controversies and concludes that, at the time, the likely alternative to the cities’ annexation of rural water was not the eternal preservation of pristine wilderness, but rather corporate acquisition of the water for later sale to these cities. For Abbott, there is still another dimension to the story of how cities affect the rural environment: they manage landscapes. He cites examples of how the “pressures of population” on the intervening and often scenic lands between cities have forced states and federal agencies to take action. As an example, he explains how Portlanders’ recreational use of the Columbia River Gorge forced (with heavy Portland lobbying) the 1986 creation of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Abbott’s ideas here and throughout the book should trigger more research on a variety of topics. In this case, those in southern Nevada would benefit from more research on how the designation of Red Rock Canyon as a National Conservation Area in 1991 safeguarded that landscape, and what effect Senator Harry Reid’s Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act of 1998 is having on the distant wilderness areas it was designed to protect and on the Las Vegas building zone it was designed to expand. Of course, Abbott’s book is not just about urban rivalries, water wars, and environmental threats. His coverage of the post-1965 shift in immigration from Ellis Island and the Northeast to southern and western Sunbelt ports is a substantial advance upon Elliott Barkan’s pioneering work on this subject. Abbott follows these groups into the worker suburbs of major western cities, joins them with existing minorities, and unites them into a political movement that begins to flex its political muscles in the 1970s and 1980s. In Los Angeles, for instance, the postwar worker “suburbanscape” (p.96) hosted African Americans, Hispanic “farm workers,” and Japanese returning from internment camps who all shared the area near the downtown core. In Honolulu, the neighborhoods from Makiki to Kalihi made up a “setting where pan-Asian alliances could develop among multiple groups with east Asian roots.” (p.198). Abbott argues that these new minority communities offered fertile ground for organizing political resistance to the segregationist growth agendas of the white Anglo business elites who controlled City Hall in the 1950s and 1960s. In these neighborhoods that threaded their way through crowded central cities across the West, multiracial community councils, human relations committees, and even political parties promoted interethnic and interracial cooperation. In the low-income zones bordering postwar Seattle, Oakland, and Phoenix, schools, churches, and neighborhood proximities all conspired to open up channels of communication among minority groups that would unite them against the oppressive policymaking of entrenched white regimes. Book Reviews 77

But ports were not just vital gateways for immigration. They also served as windows to the Pacific Rim and as conduits for American and foreign ships plying the great ocean highway linking the United States with Asia, Micronesia, Canada, and Central and South America. Abbott highlights the key role played by western cities in America’s postwar deindustrialization, and notes that Los Angeles soared past New York and other eastern ports by the 1990s in cargoes handled. Related to this were the efforts undertaken by Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Houston, and other cities to modernize their ports. While the author correctly observes that the Los Angeles/ Long Beach “port complex” (p.252) accounted for 23 percent of all United States imports in 2002, it should also be noted that, as Steven Erie has pointed out, by the year 2000 they ranked second in the world in total shipping behind Hong Kong/Singapore—a mighty achievement indeed! While Abbott’s text moves along crisply from one point to the next in an effective manner, there are times when it moves too fast and the author does not adequately explain why certain events took place. For example, in his coverage of why the Roosevelt Administration built the giant Basic Magnesium Plant in what became Henderson, Abbott correctly cites Hoover Dam’s cheap electricity as a factor (although Lake Mead’s cheap water was equally vital for cooling down the ingots once they emerged from the ovens), but he ascribes the decision regarding the site's location to the government’s “anticipated shortages of non-ferrous metals” (p.172). Actually, it involved more than that. In 1940-41 magnesium was the “wonder metal” that was lighter than steel but almost as strong, making it the ideal material for bomb casings and airplane fuselages. Moreover, the government had no plans to build the factory in Nevada; rather, it was Senator Pat McCarran’s personal intervention with President Roosevelt that shifted the plant’s future home away from California. Of course, it helped McCarran that he and Roosevelt drove together past the site (with its miles of cheap federal land) in 1935 when they traveled from Las Vegas to Boulder City to dedicate Hoover Dam. These minor concerns aside, Abbott’s work is a must-read for anyone interested in western history. Supplementing the text are numerous charts, graphs, maps, tables, and illustrations that reinforce his innovative approach to events and processes. In fact, one of Abbott’s most effective devices is his utilization of popular culture, especially the plots, themes, and characters from novels to launch numerous discussions. Witness his clever use of Rudolfo Anaya’s novel, Albuquerque, to introduce and texture the section on urban revitalization. In short, this highly interpretive and sweeping account of western urbanization makes a major contribution to scholarship on the subject and is not to be missed.

Eugene P. Moehring University of Nevada, Las Vegas 78

CUMULATIVE INDEX - VOLUME 57 2014

Compiled by New West Indexing

Numbers 1-2 1 - 132 Spring/Summer Numbers 3-4 133 - 254 Fall/Winter

Abraham Lincoln Highway, 199 n.36 Baer, Max, 204 Adams, Eva, 230 Bagley, Will, 148 Adams, Romanzo, 141, 142, 159 n.20 Bailey, Paul, 155 Adelson, Sheldon, 237 Baker, Dean, 59, 60 Affordable Care Act, 238 Baker, Russell, 229 The Age of Reform (Richard Hofstadter), 216 Baker, Nevada, 51, 57 Agnew, Spiro, 91, 92, 102, 103 Baker Ranches, 59 Agosto, Joe, 238 Bakken, Gordon Morris, 150 American Flat, mining and, 177 Balzar, Fred, 203, 225 American Gaming Association, 233 Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 141 The American Guide Series (WPA), 144 Bancroft Library, 146 American Party, 98, 114 Bank Club, 204 The American Political Tradition and the Men Bank Crowd, 220 Who Made It (Richard Hofstadter), 217 Bank of California, 220, 221, 222 Amerikanuak: Basques in the New World (William Bannocks, 38 A. Douglass and Jon Bilbao), 156 Barber, Alicia, 6, 152, 154; “The Biggest Little Anderson, Jack, 98; Ed Fike and, 96-97; Mike Dilemma: Promoting Cultural Tourism in O’Callaghan and, 99, 100 Reno, Nevada,” 9-28 Angel, Myron, 141 Baring, Walter, 53, 98, 234, 237, 238 Anthony, Susan B, 73 Bartley, David, 186 Antiquities Act (1906), 52 Basic High School, Mike O’Callaghan and, 87, 102 Apple (computer company), 197 Basic Magnesium, 153, 171, 227 Architectural Awareness Week (Reno), 23 Basic Townsite, 237 Army Gunnery School (WWII), 193 Basin and Range (John McPhee), 147, 155 Arnold, Ron, 54 basket, photograph, 39 Arrington, Leonard, 149, 200 n.41 Basque immigrants, 155-56 Artown, 12, 21 Battle Mountain, Nevada: miners in, 166; Assembly Bill No. 8, “An Act to Restrict and railroad and, 178, 194 License Glove Contests between Man Battle Mountain Trend, 174 n.15 and Man,” 71 Bean, Thomas Lee, 91 At Pyramid Lake (Bernard Mergen), review of, Bear Mountain, 182 245-49 Beard, Charles: quotation, 3 Atlantic City, New Jersey, 10, 204 Beatty, Henry O., 108, 115; Cornelius Brosnan Austin, Nevada, 163, 166, 180, 184, 197 and, 113; career of, 110-12; opinion by, 116; photograph, 109 79

Beatty, William, 111, 115 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 32, 33; Beebe, Lucius: on boosters, 17 Pyramid Lake and, 34-35 Bellow, Saul, 37 Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 6, 39, 43, Bennett, Bill, 209 50 n.30, 240; map by, 30, 41, 45, 46, 47 Berry, George, 110 Bureau of Mines, 233 BIA. See Bureau of Indian Affairs Bureau of Reclamation, 33 Bible, Alan, 91, 99, 156, 228, 237; Great Basin Burns, Ric, 148 National Park and, 53, 54; patronage Butler, Jim: discovery by, 185 for, 233 The Big Four, 219 Cabana motor hotels, 209 “The Biggest Little Dilemma: Promoting Caesars Entertainment, 204, 212 Cultural Tourism in Reno, Nevada,” by Caesars Palace, 189, 209 Alicia Barber, 9-28 Caesars Palace Grand Prix, 189 Bilbao, Jon, 156 Cafferata, Patricia D., 4; “Nevada’s Original Biltz, Norman, 35, 228 Supreme Court Justices: A History as Black Rock Desert, 41 Colorful as the State’s,” 107-16 Black Rock Desert Trail, 50 n.30 Cahlan, Al, 89, 228 Blackhawk, Ned, 148 Cahlan, John, 228 Blahna, Dale, 56 California Gold Rush, 148, 166, 167, 175 n.27, Bland-Allison Act (1878), 169, 184 181, 186 Blasdel, Henry G., 108, 115, 137, 171, 202; on California Supreme Court, 111, 112, 115 gambling, 161; J. Neely Johnson and, 114 Cannon, Howard, 23, 84, 87, 98, 101, 233, 234, BLM. See Bureau of Land Management 237; failure for, 3; gambling and, 210; Boak, Cada: Great Basin and, 53 Richard Nixon and, 91; work of, 231 Bolton, Herbert Eugene: history writing and, Carlin, Nevada, 183; railroad and, 178 139, 140-41, 143 Carlin Trend, 165, 168, 171, 174 n.15 Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and Carlson, Helen S., 155 American Politics (Dina Titus), 153 Carson and Colorado Railroad, 185, 186, 190 Bonanza (television series), 149 Carson City, Nevada, 18, 20, 91, 114, 158, boosters, 17, 68, 199 n.21 166, 180, 188, 190, 191, 194; civil rights Boulder, Nevada, 22, 141, 233 movement and, 193; Comstock Lode and, Boulder Dam, 187, 192 179; founding of, 178; growth of, 178; Bowers, Eilley, 114 prizefighting in, 71, 72, 79 Bowers, Sandy, 114 Carson County, Nevada, 180 boxing, 155, 188, 204; for fitness, 67. Carson Morning Appeal, 70, 76 See also prizefighting Carson River, 41, 178, 179 A Boy and His Dog (movie), 37 Carson Valley Bank, 225 Boyd Gaming and Station Casinos, 212 Carter, Jimmy, 84, 236 Bradley, Lewis, 220 Cashell, Bob, 25 Briare, Bill, 238 casinos, 24, 35, 194, 196, 208, 212, 236; Brosnan, Cornelius M., 108, 114, 116; career, building, 207; buying, 210; corporate 112-13; votes for, 111; photograph, 109 ownership of, 210; high-end, 209; hotel, Brown, Ernest, 234 15; legalization of, 211; neighborhood, Brown, Perry, 56, 63 n.14 211; promotions by, 12; resort-style, 205; Bruder, Will, 12 tribal, 10, 211 Bryan, Richard, 237, 238-39; Mike O’Callaghan castaways, 209 and, 84 “A Cattle Controversy: Great Basin National Bryan, William Jennings, 184, 185, 221 Park and the Struggle for Environmental Buchanan, James, 161 Tourism,” (Peter A. Kopp), 51-64 Bulette, Julia: death of, 115 cattle industry, 19, 69 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 48 Central Pacific Railroad, 178, 183, 184, 187, Bullfrog, Nevada, 197 188, 190, 191, 222, 223, 224, 226, 232; Bullfrog Mining District, 185, 186 development and, 219 Bundy, Cliven, 240 Chan, Loren B., 151 Bunker, Richard, 237 Charlie Chan in Reno (movie), 18 80

Chicago Tribune, 77 Congregationalist, on constitutional Chinese, 164; mining and, 163 amendment, 77 Chinese Special Administrative Region, 212 Conservation Fund, 61 Chung, Sue Fawn, 156 Contested Empire: Peter Skene Ogden and the Circus Circus, 15, 212 Snake River Expeditions (John Phillip City of Reno Register of Historic Places, 23 Reid), 148 civil rights, 193, 194, 218, 232 copper, 140, 164, 187, 222; production of, 188 Civil Rights Act (1964), 194 Corbett, “Gentleman” Jim, 65, 70, 72, 73; Civil War (U.S.), 13-14, 68, 77, 107, 136, 218 Fitzsimmons and, 65, 67-68, 69, 74-75, 79 Civil Works Administration (CWA), 191 Cornish, 164; mining and, 163 Civilian Conservation Corps, 152 Cox, Walter, 228 The Civilian Conservation Corps in Nevada: From “Coxey’s Army,” 188 Boys to Men (Reneé Corona Kolvet and The Cribs, 21 Victoria Ford), 152 Crocker, Charles, 219 Clark, Walter Van Tilburg, 37, 43, 147 cui-ui, 31, 36 Clark, Wilbur, 206 Culberson, Charles, 71 Clark, William, 185 culinary union, 188, 239 Clark County, Nevada, 7, 87, 101, 205 culture, 6, 12-13, 17, 18, 19, 21, 26; environment Clark County Democratic Central and, 78; forms of, 16 Committee, 87 Curran, Harold, 148 Clark County Groundwater Board, 87 Curry, Abram, 178 Clark County Probation Department, 93, 96 Curtis, Kent A., 150 Clark County School District, 88 Cushman, Charles, 54 Clark County Water Board, 88 CWA. See Civil Works Administration Clayson, William, 3, 4; “A Real Man Among Men: How Republicans Helped Dalitz, Morris “Moe,” 206, 207 Democrat Mike O’Callaghan Win the Davies, Richard O., 155, 189 1970 Nevada Governor’s Race,” 83-106 Davis, Sam P., 141 Cline, Gloria Griffen, 148 Dawson, Scott, 56 Cold War, 3, 47, 153, 193, 230, 235 Daykin, Frank, 176 n.39 Cole, George, 225 Dayton, Nevada, 166, 178 Colorado River, 156, 231 de Quille, Dan, 149, 220 Colorado River Commission, Ed Fike and, defense spending, 193, 194, 236 84, 91 Del Papa, Frankie Sue, 233 Colorado River Properties, Ed Fike and, 91, 97 Del Webb company, 209 Columba Mountain, 185 DeLong, Charles: John Millain and, 115 Combat Zoning: Military Land-Use Planning in DeLongchamps, Frederick, 23 Nevada (David Loomis), 153 Democratic Party, 111, 112, 115, 153, 217, 221, Committee to Review the National Policy 228, 237, 238; Mike O’Callaghan and, toward Gambling, 210 87, 93 Comstock Era, 137, 218-22 Dempsey, Jack, 189 Comstock Hotel-Casino, 13 Denton, Ralph: Patrick McCarran and, 229 Comstock Lode, 4, 6, 15, 113, 140, 147, 161, 162, Department of Defense, 47, 153 163, 165, 169, 186, 194, 201, 237; demise Department of the Interior, 31, 233 of, 184; impact of, 149, 167, 177, 178, Derby Dam, 31 179; production of, 166, 173 n.5; urban Desert Challenge: An Interpretive History of network and, 177 Nevada (Richard G. Lillard), 145 Comstock Mining and Mines: The Comprehensive Desert Inn, 32, 196, 206, 209 History of Virginia City’s Mining Industry Desert Inn Country Club, 189 (Eliot Lord), 149 Desert Inn Golf Course, 207 Comstock Mining District, 167 Deskin, Ruthe, 100 Comstock Women: The Making of a Mining Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Community (Ronald M. James and C. Journey West (Ethan Rarick), 148 Elizabeth Raymond, eds.), 156 Destination Gobi (movie), 38 Conforte, Joe, 91 Disney, Walt, 196 81

Disneyland, 196 Ernaut, Pete, 237 diversification, 12-13, 196 Esmeralda County, Nevada, 166 divorce, 6, 17, 18, 19, 20, 32, 69, 144, 152, 193, Estrada, Johnny, 86 196, 226; as industry, 20-21, 81 n.13, 142; Eureka, Nevada, 163, 180, 183, 197; waiting period for, 194-95 miners in, 166 divorce colony, 142 Eureka Sentinel, 184 divorce-seekers, photograph, 14 The Expeditions of John Charles Frémont (Donald Dominguez-Escalante Expedition (1776), 147 Jackson and Mary Lee Spence), 148 Donner party, film on, 148 Exploring the Great Basin (Gloria Griffin The Donner Party: A Day-by-Day Account of a Cline), 148 Doomed Wagon Train, 1846-1847 (Frank Mullen), 148 Fahrenkopf, Frank, 233 Donrey Media Group, 89, 96, 100 Fair, James, 219, 220 Douglass, William A., 151, 156 Fair Labor Standards Act, 188 “Down Winders,” 153 Fairchild, Sam, 15 Driggs, Don: on Mike O’Callaghan, 88 Fallon, Nevada, 153, 182, 193; irrigation in, 142 Duckwater Reservation, 154 Fallon Naval Air Station, 193

Earp, Wyatt, 74 Faragher, John Mack, 148 East of Eden, West of Zion (Wilbur S. Fearful Crossing: The Central Overland Trail Shepperson), 155 through Nevada (Harold Curran), 148 economic development, national park and, Federal Aid Highway Act (1916), 189 59, 142 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 225 “Economic Development Plan for Pyramid Federal Emergency Management Lake Indian Reservation” (William L. K. Administration, 87 Schwartz and David P. Fogel), 34 Federal Emergency Relief Administration economic growth (in Nevada), 152, 164-65, (FERA), 191 230, 235 Federal Land Policy and Management Act economy, 69; recession and, 10; wartime, 152 (1976), 43, 50 n.30, 54 Eddleman, Lee, 58 Federal Writers’ Project, 144 education, 218-19, 232; for Americanization, Ferraro, Greg, 237 152; civic, 143 Fifteenth Amendment, 230 Edwards, Jerome E., 152 fightocracy, 65, 70, 71, 74 Egan Trail, 149 Fike, Ed, 84, 88, 91, 102; campaign of, 94; El Cortez, 206 corruption by, 3, 85; criticism of, 96-97, El Rancho Hotel, photograph, 205 98, 100, 101, 103; Laxalt and, 99; Nixon El Rancho Vegas, 205, 206 and, 92, 93, 97; Mike O’Callaghan and, Eldorado Hotel, 15 85, 87, 90, 93, 96, 98-99; vote for, 96, 101 Eldridge, Dave: buyout discussions and, 60 “Final General Management Plan” (NPS), 57, 58 Elko, Nevada, 35, 189, 190, 191, 193, 212, Final Report (Nevada Sesquicentennial 229; miners in, 166; railroad and, 178; Commission), 135 university at, 194 fisheries, restoration of, 36 Elliott, Gary E., 156 Fitzsimmons, Bob, 72; Jim Corbett and, 65, 67- Elliott, Russell R., 143-44, 146, 150, 151, 157, 68, 69, 74-75, 79 164, 186 Fitzsimmons, Rose, 65, 74 Ely, Nevada, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 229; Flamingo, 196, 206, 209, 217 copper mining/smelting in, 151; mining Flood, James, 220 at, 164, 166 Foley, John, 87 Endangered Species Preservation Act (1966), Ford, Jean, 156 36 Ford, Victoria, 152 Ensign, John, 236, 239 Foreign Relations Committee, 224, 229 “The Enterprise of Nevada History,” by Fort Churchill, 167 William D. Rowley, 139-59 Forty Years in the Wilderness: Impressions of entertainment, 4, 68, 172 Nevada, 1940-1980 (James C. Hulse), environment, 157; culture and, 78 157, 171 82

Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Getchell Mine, 164, 174 n.14 Nevada (David A. Johnson), 150 The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak Francaviglia, Richard V., 155 (James A. Mooney), 155 Frazier, Maude, 232 Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion freeport law, 210 and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Frémont, John C., 32, 36, 148, 157; Pyramid Nineteenth Century (Gregory Smoak), 155 Lake and, 31, 37 Gibbons, Jim, 237 Fremont Street, 17, 195, 204 Gilded Age, 142, 183, 220 Frémont’s First Impressions (Anne F. Hyde), 148 Glad, Betty, 152 Frisbee, Meg, 4; “Nevada’s Fightocracy: Glass, Mary Ellen, 150, 154 The Battle Over Morality and Culture Glotfelty, Cheryll, 157 at the Carson City 1897 Heavyweight Go East Young Man: Imagining the American Championship Prizefight,” 65-82 West as the Orient (Richard V. “From Where I Sit” (Al Cahlan), 89 Francaviglia), 155 Frontier Hotel, 209, 211 Golconda, Nevada, 191, 223 The Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush gold, 171; discovery of, 161, 180, 222; and Early California (Sarah Royce), 148 production of, 171 Frontier Thesis (F. J. Turner), 182 Gold Acres Mine, 164, 174 n.14 Fryer, E. Reeseman, 34, 35 Gold Bullion Theatre, 15 Gold Butte National Monument, 239 Gabbs, Nevada: mining in, 171 Gold Canyon, 161 Gage, General, 183 Gold Hill, 161, 178, 179; miners in, 177; gambling, 6, 17, 18, 19, 32, 74, 137, 142, 144, population of, 166 152, 156, 161, 164, 182, 195, 196, 294; Gold Rush, 104, 113, 181, 219 article about, 201-15; commercial, 202, Golden Nugget, 211 203; debts, 207; development of, 206, Goldfield, Nevada, 141, 166, 183, 185, 186, 188, 213; illegal, 202, 203, 206; legacy of, 213; 189, 192, 226, 237; boom in, 140, 142, 143, legalization of, 171, 195, 196, 202-203, 218, 222, 231; gold bonanza at, 164 208, 210, 222, 225; oversight of, 154, 203, Goldfield Consolidated Mining Company, 231; prizefighting and, 66, 67; taxing, 228; 167, 185 tourism and, 210, 211; underworld ties to, 153 Goldfield: The Last Gold Rush on the Western gambling halls, 204, 205, 206 Frontier (Sally Zanjani), 151 Gambling on Ore: The Nature of Metal Mining Goldwater, Barry, 216 in the United States, 1860-1910 (Kent A. Gomberg, William, 34 Curtis), 150 Gonder, Owen: buyout discussions and, 60 gaming, 9, 12, 21, 155, 228, 234; casino, 193, “Good Luck If You Do: Nevada’s Long 201, 209, 211, 213; federal investigations Relationship with Gambling,” by David of, 238-39; nationalization of, 196; G. Schwartz, 201-15 revenues from, 12 “Good Time Coming?”: Black Nevadans in the Gaming Control Board, 23, 208, 232, 237 Nineteenth Century (Elmer Rusco), 156 gaming industry, 137, 202, 206, 207, 208, 212; Goodwin, Joanne, 152 development of, 233; mobsters and, 236; Graham, Bill, 204 tourism and, 10 Grand Teton National Park, 63 n.1 gaming licenses, 203, 207, 210, 229 Grandelmyre, Joseph: Charles Greene and, 70 Gammon, C. L., 149 Gray, Edwin, 186 Garcés, Francisco, 147 grazing, 52, 54, 57, 60; allotments, 61; permits/ Gardner, Martin, 36, 37, 49 n.14 leases, 61; policy for, 58; tourism and, 55, 56 Gartland, Daniel, 72 Great American Desert, 160 Genoa, Nevada, 166, 179 Great Basin, 4, 31, 53, 139, 147, 148, 150, 154, George, Walter, 229 157, 160, 161 George Simpson Wagon Road Survey, 149 Great Basin Field Office, 60 George Wingfield: Owner and Operator of Nevada Great Basin Indians, 148 (C. Elizabeth Raymond), 151 Great Basin Indians: An Encyclopedic History Gesell, Gerhard, 41 (Michael Hittman), 154 83

Great Basin National Park, 7, 239; article Heritage Tourism Coalition (HTC), 18, 19, 21 about, 51-64; creation of, 51-62, 63 n.14; Heritage Tours, 21; map, 21 grazing in, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62; Hicks, Marion, 196 photograph, 52 High Country News, 59, 60 Great Basin National Park Act (1986), High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trail, 50 n.30 passage of, 55 Hilton Hotels, 209 Great Depression, 53, 144, 152, 171, 187, 192, historic preservation, 18, 19, 22-23 213, 226; impact of, 193; mining and, 164 Historic Reno Preservation Society (HRPS), 18, The Great Mormon War of 1857 and 1858 G. L. 19, 21, 23 Gammon), 149 Historic Reno Walking Map, 23 Great Recession, 158, 239 history: collective memory and, 137; Great Reno Balloon Race, 12 commemoration and, 135; enterprise of, The Greatest Story Ever Told (movie), 38 139-59 Greeley, Horace: on Great Basin, 160 History of Nevada (Myron Angel), 141 Green, Michael, 137, 157; “The Nevada History of Nevada (Russell R. Elliott), 147 Political Tradition at 150,” 216-44 History of Nevada (Thompson and West), 149, Greene, Charles, 70 202, 203 Greenspun, Hank, 92, 93, 96, 98, 228, 234; Jack The History of Nevada (Sam P. Davis), 141 Anderson and, 97; Mike O’Callaghan History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming and, 84, 85, 89, 90, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103; (Hubert Howe Bancroft), 141 support from, 3 History of the Big Bonanza: An Authentic Griffith, R. E., 196, 206 Account of the Discovery, History, and Grosh brothers, 167 Working of the Renowned Comstock Silver Growing up in a Company Town (Russell R. Lode of Nevada (Dan de Quille), 149 Elliott), 151 History of the State of Nevada: Its Resources and Gypsum Cave, 173 n.2 People (Thomas Wren), 141 Hittman, Michael, 138, 154, 155; book review H. H. Bancroft History Company, 141 by, 245-49 Halcyon (Nevada Humanities publication), 152 Hoffa, Jimmy, 209 Hang Tough! Grant Sawyer: An Activist in the Hofstadter, Richard, 216, 217, 240, 241 n.2 Governor’s Mansion (Tom King), 154 Holiday Inn, 204 Hansen, Daniel, 98, 99, 101-2 Homestead Act, 218 Harding, Warren G., 52, 191 Hoover Dam, 141, 156, 192, 204; bridge by- Hardrock Miners: A History of the Mining Labor pass for, 85; building of, 152, 224 Movement in the American West (Richard “Hoovervilles,” 192 E. Lingenfelter), 149 Hopkins, Mark, 219 Harmon, John, 111 Hot August Nights, 12 Harner, Nellie Shaw, 38 Hotel Last Frontier, 196, 206 Harold’s Club, 10, 13, 21, 22, 195, 204, 209 Houghton, Samuel G., 37 Harrah, William Fisk, 137, 204 Howard, Anne Bail, 151 The Harrah Collection, 13 HRPS. See Historic Reno Preservation Society Harrah’s, 22, 204, 212 HTC. See Heritage Tourism Coalition Hawley, Thomas, 170 Hudson, Frank, 38 Hawthorne, Nevada, 193, 224, 230 Hudson Bay Company, 147, 148 Hawthorne Naval Ammunition Depot, 153 Hughes, Howard, 93, 137; Mike O’Callaghan Hecht, Jacob “Chic”: Great Basin National and, 94; Joy Sarno and, 209 Park and, 54, 55 Hull, Thomas, 195, 196, 205 Helldorado Rodeo, 189 Hulse, James C., 146, 157, 171, 172 Henderson, Nevada, 87, 153, 171, 193, 211; Humboldt County, Nevada: mining in, 164 mining and, 240 Humboldt National Forest, 56 Hendricks, Al: Dave Livermore and, 60 Humboldt River, 41 heritage, 21, 24; cultural, 6, 12-13, 14, 16, 17, Huntington, Collis, 219, 220 18, 23, 25, 26, 71, 230; western, 13-15, 16, Hyde, Anne F., 148 18, 22, 23, 67 Hyde, Orson: curse of, 149 Heritage Corridor Tours, 19; booklet for, 21, 20 84

Ignoble Conspiracy (Sally Zanjani and Guy Keith, John, 56 Rocha), 151 Kennecott Copper Company, 54, 187, 229 In Nevada: The Land, the People, God, and Chance Kennedy, David, 92 (David Thomson), 155 Kennedy, John F., 32, 98 Incline Village, 179 Kerkorian, Kirk, 137, 209 ndian Gaming Regulatory Act (1988), 10, 158, Key Pittman: The Tragedy of a Senate Insider 211 (Betty Glad), 152 Indian New Deal, 50 n.19 King, Joseph, 148 Indians of Coo-yu-ee (Pyramid Lake) (Nellie King, Tom, 154 Shaw Harner), 38 Kinkead, John, 220 Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), Klein, Ed, 35 186, 224 Klos, Pat, 18 The Infamous King of the Comstock: William Know Nothing Party, 111, 114 Sharon and the Gilded Age in the West Kolvet, Renée Corona, 152 (Michael J. Makley), 149 Kopp, Peter A., 7; “A Cattle Controversy: Ingalls, John J., 74, 75 Great Basin National Park and the Insull, Samuel, 188, 199 n.28 Struggle for Environmental Tourism in International Development Services (IDS), 34 Nevada,” 51-64 International Hotel, 209 Kraft, James P.: review of his Vegas at Odds, Interstate 11: 192 250-51 Interstate 15: 191 Ku Klux Klan, 152 Interstate 80: 191 ku-yu’-i-wai, 32, 35 Interstate Highway Act (1956), 231 kuyui, 31, 32 Irish, 164; mining and, 163 Kuyuidökadö, 31, 32, 34, 36 Israel, Fred, 152 Israeli Defense Forces, Mike O’Callaghan labor organizations, 152, 188 and, 84 Lahontan cutthroat, 31 Lake Lahontan, 147 Jackson, Donald, 148 Lake Louise, development at, 34 Jackson, Robert, 168 Lake Mead, 156; water from, 231, 234 Jaindl, Ray, 58 Lake Tahoe, 6, 10, 20, 31, 53, 179, 204, 212; James, Ronald M., 136-37, 149, 156; a”Mining investment at, 211 and Nevada: An Entwined History” Lambert, Darwin, 54 (with Eric C. Nystrom), 160-76 Lambert, Eileen, 54 Jeffries, Jim, 18, 189 Land Grant College Act, 218-19 Jews: A History in Nevada (John P. Marschall), 156 Lander County, Nevada, 111; mining in, 164 John Mackay: Silver King in the Gilded Age Landmark Hotel, 209 (Michael J. Makley), 149 Lansky, Jake, 196, 232 Johnson, Andrew, 175 n.29 Lansky, Meyer, 196, 207, 208, 232 Johnson, David A., 150, 175 n.29 Las Vegas, Nevada, 22, 181, 188, 191, 192, 197, Johnson, Frank, 97 217; appeal of, 207; civil rights movement Johnson, Jack, 18, 189 and, 193; divorce and, 195; economic Johnson, John Neely, 108, 112; career of, activity in, 164; gambling in, 18, 164, 205, 113-14; concurrence by, 116; Bernard C. 206, 207, 209, 211, 212; growth of, 156-57, Whitman and, 114 196, 231; power of, 231-32; success for, 7; Johnson, Lyndon B., 87, 229 tourism and, 193, 195, 210, 211 Jones, Cliff, 196 Las Vegas: A Centennial History (Eugene P. Jones, John P., 219 Moehring), 157 Journal of Social History, 150 Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad, 182, 185 The Journals of Alfred Doten, 1849-1903 (Walter Las Vegas Boulevard, 191, 207, 212 Van Tilburg Clark), 147 Las Vegas City Commission, 203 judges, territorial, 107-16 Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, 4 Kefauver, Estes, 153, 207, 210, 228, 231 Las Vegas Hilton, 209 Kefauver Committee, 207, 208 Las Vegas Mission, 149 85

Las Vegas Review-Journal, 61, 98, 184, 228, 234, Lone Star Ranch, divorce-seekers at, 239; O’Callaghan and, 89, 90, 96 photograph, 14 Las Vegas Sands, 212, 237 The Long Campaign: A Biography of Anne Martin Las Vegas Strip, 17, 93, 191, 196, 205, 207, 209, (Anne Bail Howard), 151 211, 212, 213, 232, 237, 239; casinos on, Long Nineteenth Century, 137, 218-22 208, 210; hotels on, 217; revenues for, 212 Loomis, David, 153 Las Vegas Sun, 99, 228, 234; mudslinging Lord, Eliot, 149 by, 98; Richard Nixon and, 84; Mike Los Angeles Highway, 195-96 O’Callaghan and, 84, 88, 89, 90, 96, 97, Lovelock, Nevada: railroad and, 178, 194 100, 101; support from, 3 Lum, Q. C., 35 Las Vegas Sun’s Youth Forum, 89, 93 Las Vegas Voice, 96 Macau, 196, 212 Laughlin, Nevada, 211, 212 Mack, Effie Mona, 144-45; photograph, 145 Lavender, John, 149 Mackay, John, 219, 220 Lawyer’s Title Insurance Company, 97 Mad Max (movie), 38 Laxalt, John: McCarran and, 233 Madden, Billy, 74 Laxalt, Paul, 23, 88, 90, 216, 234-35, 236, 237, magnesium, 153, 164, 171, 193 238; Jack Anderson and, 97; Ed Fike and, Maher, Peter, 68 99; Great Basin National Park and, 54, The Main Event: Boxing in Nevada: From the 55; Patrick McCarran and, 233; Richard Mining Camps to the Las Vegas Strip, The Nixon and, 91, 93; on Mike O’Callaghan, (Richard O. Davies), 155 94; Ronald Reagan and, 156; vote for, 96; Makley, Michael J., 149 withdrawal by, 3, 85, 103; photograph, 235 Malley, Ed, 225 Laxalt, Robert, 88; Basque immigrants and, Malone, George, 228, 234 155-56; on gambling/tourism, 210 Mandalay Resort Group, 236 League of Nations, 143, 152 “Manly Gambles: The Politics of Risk on the Lee, Martha, 56, 63 n.14 Comstock Lode” (Gunther Peck), 150 Lehman Caves, 57 Mapes, Charles, 33 Lehman Caves National Monument, 52-53 Mapes Hotel Casino, destruction of, 22 Leland, Joy, 34 Mapping and Imagination in the Great Basin: Leland, Robert, 34 A Cartographic History (Richard V. Leopold, Luna, 63 n.17 Francaviglia), 155 Lerude, Warren, 98 Marble Bluff Fish Facility, 45 Letters from the Nevada Frontier: Correspondence Mark Twain’s Nevada (Effie Mona Mack), 145 of Tasker L. Oddie, 1898-1902 (William A. Marschall, John P., 156 Douglass and Robert A. Nylen), 151 Martin, Anne, 142-43, 144, 151, 152, 158, 230 Lewis, James F., 108, 112, 113; career of, 110; Mason Valley News, 228 dissent by, 116; photograph, 109 Massey, William A., 223 Liebling, A. J., 37 Masterson, Bat, 74 Life among the Piutes (Sarah Winnemucca), 154 “Mathematical Games” (Martin Gardner), 36 Lillard, Richard G., 145 Mather, Stephen, 53 Lincoln, Abraham, 107, 113, 175 n.29, 218; Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center Henry O. Beatty and, 111; statehood (MIKC), 154 and, 180 Matrix, Irving, 36 Lincoln, Francis Church, 151 McCarran, Patrick Anthony, 191, 217, 234, 237, Lincoln Highway, 10, 24 238; career of, 150, 225-26; death of, 230, Lindley, Curtis H., 168 231, 232, 233; defense spending and, 193; Lingenfelter, Richard E., 149 demagoguery of, 151; Ralph Denton and, List, Robert: photograph, 235 229; economic growth and, 230; election Literary Nevada: Writings from the Silver State of, 226; financial support for, 228; legacy (Cheryll Glotfelty), 157 of, 156; New Deal funding and, 192; Mike Livermore, Dave: Al Hendricks and, 60 O’Callaghan and, 88; patronage and, 227, Livingston, Al, 70 233; photograph, 227 Loco-Foco Democrats, 112 McCarran International Airport, 83, 191 Lomprey, Margaret: Mike O’Callaghan and, 89 McCarthy, Joseph, 230, 234 86

McCaskie, Sonja, 91 Mint (casino), 209 McCloskey, Jack, 228 Mint Act (1873), 220, 221 McDonald, Bob, 233 Mint 500 (race), 189 McDonald, Joseph, 228 Mirage-Land: Images of Nevada (Wilbur S. McGill, Nevada, 187, 188; copper mining/ Shepperson), 155 smelting in, 151; mining at, 164 The Mirage, 211, 213, 237 McKay, Jim, 204 Mirage Revolution, 196 McKinley, William, 222 The Misfits(movie), 38 McPhee, John, 147, 155 Misrach, Richard, 48 Mechling, Tom, 228 Mitchell, John, 92 media: politicians and, 234; prizefighting and, 78 Mob Museum, 154 Meldahl, Keith Heyer, 148 Moehring, Eugene P., 138, 157; “The Urban “Memo to Hank” (Ruthe Deskin), 100 Impact: Towns and Cities in Nevada’s Mendeleev, Dimitri, 180-81 History,” 177-200; gambling industry Mergen, Bernard, 6, 7; “Survivors, Seekers, and, 137; review by, 250-51 Sojourners, Squatters and Sportsmen: Moody, Eric, 213 The Ineffable Attraction of Pyramid Mooney, James A., 155 Lake,” 29-50; review of, 245-49 Moore, William, 196, 206 Merry Wives of Reno (movie), 18 More Peoples of Las Vegas: One City, Many Mesick, Richard, 111, 113 Faces (Jerry L. Simich and Thomas C. Mesquite, Nevada, 181, 211 Wright), 157 Meyer, Lothar, 180-81 “More than Meets the Eye: Enigmas of MGM Grand, 189, 209, 239 Nevada Tourism,” by C. Elizabeth MGM Resorts International, 212 Raymond, 4-8 MIKC. See Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter- Millain, John: murder conviction of, 115, 116 day Saints (Leonard Arrington), 149 Miller, Arthur, 38 Mormon Station, Nevada, 166 milling, 168, 181, 174 n.15 Mormon, agricultural towns, 181 Mills, Darius, 219 Mormon War, 148, 149 Mineral County Independent, 228 Mormons, 94, 99, 148-49, 238 mineral production, 162, 166, 173 n.6 Mormons in Nevada (Leonard Arrington), 149 mineralization, 162, 175 n.15 “Mornin’ in the Desert” (poem), text of, 43 mining, 19, 149-50, 151, 182, 183, 187, 213, 219, Mott, William Penn, Jr.: dedication speech for 220, 222, 227, 228, 231; boom in, 110, 163, Great Basin National Park, 56-57 167; economic impact of, 161, 163-64, Mount Davidson, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181 165, 166-67, 170; elements of, 162; growth Muddy-Virgin River towns, 181 of, 165; legal system and, 168, 169, 170; Mueller, John, 228 Nevada and, 160-76; ranching and, 69; Mullen, Frank, 148 revival of, 140; technologies, 166, 168; Mulroy, Patricia, 231, 232 tourism and, 239 Mustang Ranch, 91 “Mining and Nevada: An Entwined History,” Myrick, David R., 155 bu Eric C. Nystrom and Ronald M. Myron Lake, 178 James, 160-76 “The Mystery of Nevada” (Jeanne Elizabeth Mining Congress Journal, 169 Wier), 144 mining districts, 168, 169, 175 n.27, 182, 184 Mining Districts and Mineral Resources of NAACP, protests by, 193 Nevada (Francis Church Lincoln), 151 Narrow Nationalism, 143, 151-52 mining era, 137, 222-31 The Nation, 142, 144 Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1849-1880 National Auto Museum, 13 (Rodman Paul), 149 National Bowling Center, 189 mining law, 168, 169, 175 n.27, 220, 230 National Championship Air Races, 12 Mining Law of 1866: 175 n.27 National Environmental Policy Act (1970), 54 Mining Law of 1872: 175 n.27 National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, 61 The Mining Law of 1872 (Gordon Morris national historic landmarks, 15 Bakken), 150 National Industrial Recovery Act, 191 87

National Park Foundation, 61 Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 152, 158; National Park Service (NPS): “A Cattle Eugene P. Moehring and, 157; Controversy: Great Basin National Park publication of, 146 and the Struggle for Environmental Nevada Humanities, 152 Tourism in Nevada,” 51-64; grazing and, Nevada Indian Agency, 34 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63 n.1; Great Nevada Mining Association, 176 n.35 Basin National Park and, 54, 55 Nevada Museum of Art (Reno), 12, 21 national railroad strike (1894), 185, 188 Nevada National Security Site, 239 National Register of Historic Places, 22, 23 Nevada Oral History Project, 154 “National Scenic Byways,” 43 Nevada Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary National Trust for Historic Places, 22 (Helen S. Carlson), 155 National Trust for Historic Preservation, 12 “The Nevada Political Tradition at 150,” by National Woman Suffrage Association, 73 Michael Green, 216-44 “Natural and Cultural Resources Management Nevada Proving Grounds, 193 Plan,” 58, 59 Nevada Sesquicentennial Commission, Final natural resources, developing, 58, 61-62 Report by, 135 “Natural Resources Management Plan,” 58 Nevada State Fair, 13 Nature Conservancy, 60, 61 Nevada State Gaming Regulatory Board, 153 Neilson, Cindy: ranching and, 61 Nevada State Journal, 73, 96, 225, 228 Nellis Air Force Base, 85, 191, 193, 207 Nevada State Library and Archives, 146 Nelson, Sophia, 112 Nevada Supreme Court, 91, 226, 230, 232; Nelson, Wolfred: Cornelius M. Brosnan and, 112 justices of, 107-16 Neon Metropolis (Hal Rothman), 4 Nevada Tax Commission, 207, 208, 229 Nevada: A Guide to the Silver State (Binfords & Nevada Territorial Legislature, 113 Mort), 144 Nevada Territory, 178; creation of, 140, 169, 218 Nevada: A History of the Silver State (Michael Nevada Territory Wild West Fair, 13, 14 Green), 157 Nevada Test Site, 207, 227, 236 Nevada: A History of the State from the Earliest Nevada Test Site Museum, 153 Times through the Civil War (Effie Mona Nevada Test Site Oral History Project, 153 Mack), 144-45 Nevada’s Environmental Legacy: Progress or Nevada: A Narrative of the Conquest of a Frontier Plunder (James C. Hulse), 157 Land (James G. Scrugham), 141 “Nevada’s Fightocracy: The Battle over “Nevada: Beautiful Desert of Buried Hopes,” Morality and Culture at the Carson The Nation article (Anne Martin), 142 City 1897 Heavyweight Championship Nevada: Great Rotten Borough, 1859-1964 Prizefight,” by Meg Frisbee, 65-82 (Gilman Ostrander), 150 Nevada’s Key Pittman (Fred Israel), 152 The Nevada Adventure (James C. Hulse), 146 Nevada’s Northeast Frontier (Edna Patterson), 150 Nevada Central Railroad, 15 “Nevada’s Original Supreme Court Justices: Nevada Commission on Tourism, 9, 19, 61 A History as Colorful as the State’s,” by Nevada Consolidated Copper Company, 187 Patricia D. Cafferata, 107-16 Nevada Constitution, 143, 180, 219 Nevada’s Turbulent ‘50s: Decade of Political, Nevada Constitutional Conventions, 113, 114 Economic Change (Mary Ellen Glass), 154 Nevada Department of Health and Human Nevada’s Twentieth-Century Mining Boom: Services, 87 Tonopah, Goldfield, Ely (Russell R. Nevada Department of Highways, 189, 190, 191 Elliott), 151 Nevada Department of Welfare, 87 New Deal, 144, 152, 188, 191, 192, 228, 230, 234 Nevada Federation of Women’s Clubs, 43 Newlands, Francis G., 77, 219, 221, 224, 226; Nevada Fish and Game Commission, 33 death of, 142; reclamation and, 230; Reno Nevada Gaming Commission, 154, 208, 238 and, 225; rise of, 222 Nevada Gaming Control, 97 Newlands Irrigation Project, 31, 33, 34, 142 Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps (Stanley Newlands Reclamation Act, 221, 223 Paher), 155 Newlands Reclamation Project, 36, 41 Nevada Highways and Parks, 32, 38, 43 Newmont Hill and Pit (Carlin), photograph, 165 Nevada Historical Society, 21, 140, 144, 146; Newmont Mining Corporation, 165 conference of, 4; Jeanne Weir and, 139, 141 Nightingale Mountains, 37, 49 n.14 88

Nixon, George, 185, 223, 224 Paher, Stanley, 155 Nixon, Pat, 92 Paiute Indian Reservation, Pyramid Lake Nixon, Richard M., 4, 84, 85, 97; electioneering and, 31 by, 3, 83, 90-91, 92, 93, 102, 103 Paiute Museum and Cultural Center, 48 Nixon, Nevada, 45, 48; housing at, 36 Paiutes, 35, 38, 45, 47, 74, 182; future for, 48; Noel, Thomas: saloons and, 182 origin myths of, 39; Pyramid Lake and, North, John, 110, 113 31; Truckee River and, 32 North Las Vegas, Nevada, 193, 211 Palace Club, 204, 229 Northern Paiutes, 31, 35, 39 Panic of 1893, 69 Northwest Ordinance (1787), 81 n.12, 180 Panic of 1907, 187 Not Like a River: The Memoir of an Activist The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Richard Academic (Elmer Rusco), 154 Hofstadter), 216 Nothing Seemed Impossible: William C. Ralston Pat McCarran: Political Boss of Nevada (Jerome and Early San Francisco (John Lavender), E. Edwards), 152 149 patriotism, 140, 141, 152 NPS. See National Park Service Patterson, Edna, 150 NPS Organic Act, 58 Paul, Rodman, 149 nuclear testing, 153, 157 Peck, Gunther, 149-50 Numana Fish Hatchery, 45 Pennington, Bill, 209 Nye, James W., 167, 180, 219; gambling and, People of the Marsh (video), 154 202; James F. Lewis and, 110; Bernard C. Peoples of Las Vegas: One City, Many Faces (Jerry Whitman and, 115 L. Simich and Thomas C. Wright), 157 Nye County, Nevada, 225 People’s Party, 221 Nylen, Robert A., 151 People’s Volunteer Army, 85 Nystrom, Eric C., 136-37, 150; “Mining and Perlstein, Rick, 92 Nevada: An Entwined History,” (with Pershing County, Nevada: mining grubstakes Ronald M. James), 160-76 in, 176 n.38 Pettricianni, John, 204 Oases of Culture: A History of Public and Pioche, Nevada, 163, 171; boom in, 181 Academic Libraries in Nevada (James C. Pit River band (Paiutes), 38 Hulse), 157 Pittman, Key, 152, 191, 224, 226, 228, 233, 238; Obama, Barack: Harry Reid and, 238 mining and, 169; F. D. Roosevelt and, “The Obligation of Nevada toward the 192, 229 Writing of Her Own History” (speech by Pittman, Mimosa, 152 Herbert Eugene Bolton), 139 Pittman, Vail, 228 O’Brien, William, 220 Pittman Silver Purchase Act, 169, 184 O’Callaghan, Donal “Mike,” 4, 234, 238; article political tradition, article about, 216-44 about, 83-106; campaign of, 3, 88-89, 91, politics: mining, 150; prizefighting and, 72-78 93, 94, 96, 98, 100, 101; heroism of, 84, 87, polychrome water, 36-39 89, 103; photographs, 86, 95 population growth, 68, 69, 146 O’Callaghan, Michael, 87, 90, 94 population statistics, 78-79 O’Callaghan Range, 94 Populism, 216, 221, 222, 241 n.10 Oddie, Tasker L., 189, 223, 224, 226; The Postman (movie), 38 progressivism and, 242 n.15 prejudice, 141-42, 193 Office of Emergency Preparedness, 87 preservationists, 55, 57, 58 Ogden, Peter Skene, 147-48 prizefighting, 4, 6, 19, 155, 188, 189, 222; article Old Emigrant Trail, 178 about, 65-82; crackdowns on, 68-70; O’Neill, Thomas P. “Tip,” 235 gambling and, 66, 67; legalization of, Onondaga Historical Association, 112 18, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70-72; media and, 78; Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party movies about, 68; opposition to, 68, 71, (George Stewart), 148 78; politics and, 72-78; popularization of, organized crime, gambling and, 208 74-75; Progressive movement and, 66, Ostrander, Gilman, 150-51, 221 67, 69, 72, 76, 79; working class and, 74; Our State: Nevada (Bird Wall Sawyer and Effie photograph, 66 Mona Mack), 145 Progressive Era, 4, 67, 78, 140, 141, 150-51, 222, 225 89

Progressive movement, 65, 70, 80 n.5; Meets the Eye: Enigmas of Nevada prizefighting and, 66, 67, 69, 72, 76, 79; Tourism,” 4-8 social programs and, 77 Reagan, Ronald, 54, 235; Paul Laxalt and, Progressive Reform, 140, 141, 143 156; Sagebrush Rebellion and, 236; Progressives, 151, 223, 225, 230, 242 n.15; photograph, 235 divorce waiting period and, 194-95 “’A Real Man Among Men, A’: How prostitution, 20, 21, 67, 91, 182 Republicans Helped Mike O’Callaghan Public Law 99-565; 58 Win the 1970 Nevada Governor’s Race,” Public Law 105-134; 60 by William Clayson, 83-106 Public Works Administration (PWA), 191 Reclaiming the Arid West: The Career of Francis Pyramid domes, 43, 45, 30 G. Newlands (William D. Rowley), 151 Pyramid Lake, 6, 7; article about, 29-50; Reconstruction (post-Civil War), 218 described, 31, 37-38; development plan Red Mountain Dwellers (video), 154 for, 34; fishing at, 29; images of, 31; Red Scare, 151 legend of, 38; map, 41; movies and, 38; Reese River, 181, 186 preservation of, 39; recreation at, 41; Reese River Mining District, 180 road maps for, 39-47; illustration, 30; Reese River Reveille, 184 photograph, 39; map, 40, 44 Reid, Harry, 61, 98, 146, 148, 232, 236, 237, 238; Pyramid Lake Enterprises, 33 criticism of, 234; Great Basin National Pyramid Lake Guest Ranch, 32 Park and, 54, 59; Mike O’Callaghan and, Pyramid Lake Lodge, 32 85, 87, 88, 102, 103 Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, 33, 36, 47 Reid, John Phillip, 148 Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Council, 30, 32, Reid, Rory, 232 39, 43, 44 Reno, Nevada, 33, 45, 98, 141, 142, 166, Pyramid Lake Paiutes, 6, 30, 34, 45; 179, 180, 185, 188, 189, 190-94, 197; development and, 35-36; suit by, 41 advertisement, 10, arts/culture in, Pyramid Lake Scenic Byway, map, 44 12; civil rights movement and, 193; Pyramid Lake Tribal Council, 34, 35 clandestine economy of, 152; gambling Pyramid Lake Tribal Museum, 45 in, 18, 21, 164, 196, 205, 208, 209; Pyramid Lake Tribal Headquarters, 45 growth of, 178, 202-203, 231; historical Pyramid Lake Tribe of Paiute Indians v. The infrastructure of, 25; investment in, 211; Secretary of the Interior (1968), 36 landmarks in, 20; movies about, 18; Pyramid Lake Tribe…v. Walter Hickel (1968), 36 national attention for, 6, 25; popularity Pyramid Lake Tribe…v.Rogers C. B. Morton, of, 196; slogan for, 10, 15, 17, 25, 26; Secretary of the Interior (1972), 36 tourism and, 12, 17, 24, 193, 195; western Pyramid of Cheops, 31, 36 heritage of, 13-14, 14-15, 16, 18, 22, 23; Pyramid Power Laboratories, 36 advertisement, 11 Reno: Hub of the Washoe Country (William D. Rabbit Boss (video), 154 Rowley), 152 radicalism, 43 “Reno 911” (Comedy Central), 25 Raffretto, Bertha, 43 Reno-Cannon International Airport, 10 Raggio, William, 3, 88, 101, 102; campaigning Reno Chamber of Commerce, 16-17 for, 83-84; Richard Nixon and, 84, 92; A Reno Divorce (movie), 20 Mike O’Callaghan and, 91, 92 Reno Era, 137, 222-31 railroads, 195, 219, 220, 221, 227; impact of, Reno Evening Gazette, 38, 98 194; strike against, 188; transcontinental, Reno Gazette-Journal, 184 190, 202, 218 Reno Historical Resources Commission, 22, 23 Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California Reno Industrial Park, 197 (David R. Myrick), 155 Reno, Las Vegas, and the Strip: A Tale of Three ranching, 61, 142, 218, 228; mining and, 69 Cities (Eugene P. Moehring), 157 Rand, Kathryn R. L., 158 Reno National Bank (building), 23 Rand, Steven, 158 Reno Rodeo, 13, 189 Rarick, Ethan, 148 Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Rat Pack entertainment, 196 Authority (RSCVA), 6, 10, 18, 19, 21, 25 Raymond, C. Elizabeth, 151, 156; “More than Reno-Tahoe Open (PGA tour), 12 90

Reno’s Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Sandoval, Brian, 232, 233, 237, 239; address by, Biggest Little City (Alicia Barber), 152 158; Sesquicentennial and, 135 Republican Party, 98, 108, 110, 111, 112, 140, Sands, resort, 196, 209 217, 220 Sarah Winnemucca (Sally Zanjani), 154 Requa, Mark, 187 Sarno, Jay, 195, 209 Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas (Eugene P. Sawyer, Bird Wall: Effie Mona Mack and, 145 Moehring), 157 Sawyer, Grant, 87, 208, 209, 233 “Response to the Environmental Assessment” Scarne, John, 210 (Dean Baker), 59 Schwartz, Barry, 136 Restless Strangers: Nevada’s Immigrants and Schwartz, David G., 137; “Good Luck If You Their Interpreters (Wilbur S. Shepperson), Do: Nevada’s Long Relationship with 156, 163 Gambling,” 201-15 Reynolds, Donald W., 89, 234 Schwartz, William L. K., 34 Reynolds v. Sims (1964), 231 Scrugham, James G., 53, 63 n.2, 141, 223, 225 Rhoades, Eben, 111, 112 2nd Infantry “Indianhead” Division, 85, 104 Ring, Robert: on tourists, 17 n.4, 104 n.8 Riverside Hotel, 20, 23; photograph, 24 2nd Royal Australian Regiment, 104 n.8 Riviera Hotel, 189 Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and The Roar and the Silence (Ronald M. James), 149 Mining Engineering in America (Eric C. Roberts, E. E., 142, 152, 225 Nystrom), 150 Robinson District, copper in, 186 Senate Appropriations Committee, Patrick Rocha, Guy, 151 McCarran and, 226 Rocky Mountain Politics, 144 Senate Bill 61, 176 n.35 Roe v. Wade (1973), 236 Senate Committee on Taxation, 170, 176 n.35 Rogich, Sig, 233 Senate Joint Resolution 22, 176 n.35 Romney, George, 92 Senate Judiciary Committee, 113, 114, , 226, 230 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 144, 188, 192, 217, Senate Select Committee on Crime, 153 226, 234; FERA and, 191; Key Pittman Senator Alan Bible and the Politics of the New and, 229 West (Gary E. Elliott), 156 Roosevelt, Theodore, 67, 222 “The Sense of Place” (Wallace Stegner), 22 Rosenthal, Frank “Lefty,” 238 “A Sensible View” (Reno Evening Gazette), 76 Rothman, Hal, 4, 8 n.5 Servant of Power: A Political Biography of William Rough-hewn Land: A Geological Journey from M. Stewart (Russell R. Elliott), 150 California to the Rocky Mountains (Keith sesquicentennial, Nevada’s, 135-38, 177 Heyer Meldahl), 148 severance tax, 169 Rowley, William D., 136; The Enterprise of Sferrazza, Pete, 22 Nevada History,” 139-59 Shackelford, Dick: Bernard C. Whitman and, 115 Royce, Sarah, 148 Sharon, William E., 219, 220, 221, 225, 228, 237 RSCVA. See Reno-Sparks Convention and Shepperson, Wilbur S., 155, 156, 163, 173 n.8 Visitors Authority Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1890), 169, 184 Rusco, Elmer, 154, 156 Sherman Silver Purchase Act (1893), 169 Rush to Washoe, 149, 181 “Shoshone white knife,” quartz, 161 Russell, Charles, 228, 233, 234, 235, 237 Shriver, Sargent, 87 Ruth, Nevada, 187; copper mining/smelting Siegel, Benjamin “Bugsy,” 196, 206 in, 151, 164 Siegel, Richard Lewis, 158 Siler, George, 69, 75, 79 Sadler, Reinhold, 78; prizefight bill and, 70, Sill, Richard, 54 71, 74 silver, 169, 171; discovery of, 68, 180, 222; Sagebrush Rebellion, 43, 54, 236 remonetization of, 220 Sagebrush Statesman: Tasker L. Oddie of Nevada Silver and Politics in Nevada: 1892-1902 (Mary (Loren B. Chan), 151 Ellen Glass), 150 Sahara, casino, 210 Silver City, Nevada: milling in, 168; mining saloons, 143, 188, 203; as business centers, and, 177 182-83 Silver Clubs, 221 San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 202 Silver-Democrats, 221 91

Silver Legacy, fictions of, 15 statehood, 177, 180; achieving, 175 n.29 Silver Legacy Resort Casino, 15; photograph, 16 Stead Air Force Base, 33, 193 Silver Party, 150, 221 Steffens, Lincoln: on upbuilders, 159 n.5 Silver Slipper, 209 Stegner, Wallace: on American West, 22 Silver State: Nevada’s Heritage Reinterpreted Steptoe Valley Mining and Smelting (James C. Hulse), 157 Company, 187 Silverites, 221, 222 Stevenson, Adlai, 153 Simich, Jerry L., 157 Stewart, George, R. 148 Singapore, 196 Stewart, William Morris, 113, 150, 168, 169, Sioux Indians, massacre of, 154 219, 220, 221, 230; campaign finance Six Weeks in Reno (movie), 18 reform and, 222; influence of, 224; James slavery, 115, 136, 218 F. Lewis and, 110; Francis G. Newlands slot machines, 203, 205, 234 and, 222; Bernard C. Whitman and, 115 Smith, Dorothy, 204 Stewart Indian School, 21 Smith, Francis Borax, 185 Stone Mother, 36-39, 43, 45, 50 n.8; Smith, Grant H.: Comstock Lode and, 173 n.5 photograph, 39 Smith, Harold, 204 Storey County, Nevada, 108, 111, 113 Smith, Jedediah, 148 Strauss, Levi, 23 Smith, Raymond I. “Pappy,” 10, 137, 204 Streible, Dan, 68 Smoak, Gregory, 155 Stuart, Dan, 70, 71, 73 Smythe, William E., 77 Sullivan, John L., 67 Snake River Expeditions, 148 “Survivors, Seekers, Sojourners, Squatters, SNWA. See Southern Nevada Water Authority and Sportsmen: The Ineffable Attraction Snyder, Donald, 197 of Pyramid Lake,” by Bernard Mergen, Snyder, Jimmy “the Greek,” 96 29-50 Social Darwinism in American Thought (Richard Sutcliffe, James, 32, 33, 41, 45 Hofstadter), 216 Sutro Tunnel, 179 solar power, development of, 197 Sutter’s Mill, 182 South Snake Range, 52 Sweet Promised Land (Robert Laxalt), 155-56 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management “The Sweet Promised Land of Nevada” Act, 239 (Walter Van Tilburg Clark), 43 Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), Switch (company),197 157, 231, 232 Southern Pacific Railroad, 23, 47, 188, 223 Taft, William Howard, 222-23 Southern Paiutes, 38 Tammany Hall, 112 Spanish Borderlands, 139, 141 Tax Commission v. Hicks, 232 Sparks, B. Abbot, 150 taxation, 9, 10, 142, 169, 170, 228, 235 Sparks, John, 224 TCID. See Truckee Carson Irrigation District Sparks, Nevada, 18, 33 Teamsters Central States Pension Fund, loan speakeasies, 142, 152 from, 209 Special Collections Department (MIKC), Tesla, 158, 187 University of Nevada, Reno, 154 Texas Rangers, 68 Special Committee to Investigate Organized Third Interim Report (Kefauver Committee), 208 Crime in Interstate Commerce. See Thirteenth Amendment, 218 Kefauver Committee Thompson and West (publisher), 141, 149, Spence, Mary Lee, 148 202, 203 Sports Illustrated, quotation from, 29 Thomson, David, 155 Springer, Charles, 98, 99, 101 Thornley, Hank: Mike O’Callaghan and, 88, Standard Mine, 174 n.14 89, 90 Stanford, Leland, 219 Thunder Valley Indian Casino, 10 Star City, Nevada, 180, 183 Thunderbird Hotel, 189, 196, 208, 232 Stardust, resort, 196 Tillman, Pat, 85 Stark, Randall, 63 n.14 Tingley, Joseph V., 173 n.6, 174 n.14 State ex rel. H. O. Beatty v. Rhoades (1867), 111 Titus, Dina, 153, 233 State v. Millain (1867), 115 Tobin, Phil, 192-93 92

Tomlinson, John: death of, 112 United States Cultural and Heritage Tourism Tonopah, Nevada, 141, 164, 167, 185, 188, 189, Marketing Council, 12 190, 191, 192; boom in, 140, 142, 143, 218, United States Department of Commerce, 12 222, 231; mining in, 169 United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 41, 45 Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad, 186 United States Geological Survey, 165-66 Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, 185 United States House of Representatives, Tonopah Mining Company, 185 Walter Baring and, 234 Tosawihi, quartz, 161 United States Marine Corps, 85, 104 n.4 tourism, 3, 68, 79, 143, 171, 193, 195, 208, United States Mint, 230 213, 223, 232; articles about, 4-8, 9-28; United States Navy, 32 cultural-heritage, 6, 12-13, 16, 18, 19, United States Senate, 115, 150, 219, 222, 237 21, 26; entertainment, 6, 8 n.5, 146; United States Supreme Court, 107, 231 environmental, 51-64; gambling and, 10, University of California, Herbert Eugene 210, 211; grazing and, 55; growth of, 196; Bolton and, 139-141 importance of, 9; mining and, 239 University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 17, 146, Towell, David, 235 153, 197 Travel Industry of America, 19 University of Nevada, Reno, 17, 22, 54, 141, 144, Travel magazine, Reno and, 17 146, 147, 151, 154, 168; research at, 197 Treasure City, Nevada, 163, 181, 183 University of Nevada Press, 147, 150, 152, 154, Treasure Island, 211 155; state series by, 146 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, 139 Treaty of Versailles, 143, 152 urban development, 22, 231; article about, Tropicana, 238 177-200 trout, 45 “The Urban Impact: Towns and Cities Truckee Canal, 45 in Nevada’s History,” by Eugene P. Truckee-Carson Irrigation District (TCID), Moehring, 177-200 41, 221 Urbanism and Empire in the Far West, 1840-1890 Truckee-Carson-Pyramid Lake Water Rights (Eugene P. Moehring), 157 Settlement Act, 32 Utah Territory, 169 Truckee Meadows, heritage tourism in, 18 Uzcudun, Paolino, 204 Truckee River, 17, 21, 22, 31, 33, 34, 41, 45, 47, 48, 178, 192, 194; Paiutes and, 32 Valley of Fire, 223 tufa formation, 31; illustration, 30 Vassiliadis, Billy, 237 Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, 239 Vegas at Odds: Labor Conflict in a Leisure tungsten, 164, 171 Economy, 1960-1985 (James P. Kraft), Turner, Frederick Jackson: Frontier Thesis of, 182 review of, 250-251 Twain, Mark, 145, 220, 231 The Venetian, 237 Victory Highway, 10, 199 n.36; completion of, 24 Udall, Stewart, 33, 36 Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Union Pacific Railroad, 178, 204 Early American West (Ned Blackhawk), 148 Union Party, 111, 112 Virginia and Truckee Railroad, 190, 220 Unionville, Nevada, 163, 180, 183 Virginia City, Nevada, 15, 18, 110, 113, 116, 161, U.S. 40: 24 178, 179, 182, 188; milling in, 168; mining U.S. 50: 149 and, 177; politics and, 231; population of, U.S. 91: 191, 196, 205, 206 166, 194 United States Air Force, 104 n.4, 193 Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, 220 United States Army, 104 n.4, 186 Virginia Street (Reno), 21, 23, 178, 195, 204 United States Army Air Force, 153 Virginia Street Bridge (Reno), 20-21, 23 United States Army Corps of Engineers’ von Humboldt, Alexander: Pyramid Lake Historical Office, 149 and, 32 United States Army Topographical Corps, 148 Vucanovich, Barbara, 54, 55, 233 United States Bureau of American Ethnology, 155 United States Census Bureau, 181 Wadsworth, Nevada, 45, 47, 192; railroad and, 178 United States Congress, 53, 68, 167 Waite, Robert Starr, 54 United States Constitution, 143 Walker, Joseph, 148 93

Wallace, George, 90, 99 Winnemucca Field Office (BLM), 45 Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran Winnemucca Lake, 43 and the Great American Communist Hunt Winter of Entrapment: A New Look at the Donner (Michael Ybarra), 152 Party (Joseph King), 148 “Washington Merry-Go-Round” (Jack Wise-Use Movement, 54 Anderson), 96-97 With Golden Visions Bright before Them: Trials of the Washoe, Nevada, 149, 178, 179 Mining West, 1849-1852 (Will Bagley), 148 Washoe County, Nevada, 33, 101, 108, 110; Witt, Harold, 37 gaming revenues in, 12 Wobblies. See Industrial Workers of the World Washoe County Courthouse, 20, 23, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (John photograph, 24 Mack Faragher), 148 Washoe Valley, 149 Women at Work in Las Vegas, 1940-1990 (Joanne Washoes, 74 Goodwin), 152 Watt, James, 54 Women’s Christian Temperance Union “’We Need To Be Shown’: A Study of the (WCTU), 72 Talents, Work Potential and Aspirations Women’s History Project, 156 of the Pyramid Lake Indians” (William Woodburn, William, 224 Gomberg and Joy Leland), 34 Woon, Basil: quotation from, 201 wedding ring bridge, 20-21 Work Projects Administration (WPA), 144 Weekend and Wide World Outdoor Works Progress Administration (WPA), 191 Publications, 40-41 World War I, 140, 142, 143, 151, 171, 186, 187, Wells, Nevada: railroad and, 178, 194 189, 192, 203 Wendover Army Air Force Base, 153 World War II, 53, 151, 153, 191, 192, 194, 195, West Las Vegas, Nevada: violence in, 93 206, 217, 227, 228; economic growth Western History Association, 6 following, 152; tourism and, 32 Westinghouse, 187 Wounded Knee, 154 “Where I Stand” (Hank Greenspun), 89, 90, Wovoka (Jack Wilson), 155 93, 100 Wovoka: The Indian Messiah (Paul Bailey), 155 White, Richard, 135 Wovoka and the Ghost Dance (Michael White Pine County, Nevada, 54, 59, 70, 151, Hittman), 155 164, 222, 232; boom in, 181; economic WPA. See Work Projects Administration growth of, 61, 141; Great Basin National WPA. See Works Progress Administration Park and, 53, 55, 56; mining in, 140; The WPA Guide to 1930s Nevada, 152 tourism in, 63 n.14 Wren, Thomas, 141 White Pine News, 184 Wright, Richard, 112 Whitman, Bernard C., 108, 116; Henry Beatty Wright, Thomas C., 157 and, 112; career of, 114-15 “Written History as an Act of Faith” (Charles The Why, How, and Where of Gambling in Nevada Beard), quotation from, 3 (Basil Woon), quote from, 201 Wynn, Steve, 137, 195, 196, 211, 237 Wier, Jeanne Elizabeth, 139, 141, 144, 145, 151 Wynn Resorts, 212 Wilderness Act (1964), 50 n.30 Wilderness Society, grazing and, 57 Ybarra, Michael, 152 Wilkerson, Billy, 196, 206 Yellowstone Park Lodge, 35 Williams, Wayne R., 34-35 Yerington, Henry, 219, 220 The Willows, 32 Yerington & Bliss, 179 Wilson, Jack. See Wovoka YMCA, 16, 17 Wilson, Woodrow, 223, 225 Young, Cliff, 235 Wingfield, George, 23, 143, 185, 192, 223, Young, James A., 150 224-25, 226, 228, 230, 237; claims by, 182; Yucca Mountain, 239 Goldfield and, 167; women’s suffrage and, 225 Zanjani, Sally, 151, 154 Winnemucca, Sarah, 154 Winnemucca, Nevada, 183, 191, 223; railroad and, 178 Winnemucca District, 43, 45; map, 41, 42 HistoricalNevada Society Quarterly

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Membership is more than benefits—it’s about supporting one of Nevada’s cultural institutions. Thank you for your support!

Membership Categories ___ Yes, I want to become a member of the Nevada Historical Society at the following membership level: ___ Yes, I want to renew my membership at the following level (renewal date______)

___ Individual $35 ___ Family $60 ___ Institutional $50 ___ Sustaining $100 ___ Contributing $250 ___ Patron $500 ___ Benefactor $1,000 ___ Student* $20 (proof of ID required) ___ Senior* $20 *The student and senior levels do not include the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly. If you would like to receive the Quarterly, membership at the higher levels, beginning at $35, is available.

___ No, I do not wish to be a member of the Historical Society, but please accept my tax deductible donation in the amount of $______

Name(s)______

Address______

City ______State______Zip______

Phone: Home______Business______

Email ______The Society respects your right to privacy. We will not share your e-mail address with other organizations. Mail this form and your check to: Nevada Historical Society Attn: Membership, 1650 N.Virginia St. Reno, NV 89503 775-688-1190 • www.nevadaculture.org