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HOOVER DAM

Before Building the Dam

Fresno scrapers early construction of railroad to Hoover Dam
Courtesy of the University of Nevada at Reno Oral Histories

Fresno scrapers early construction of railroad to Hoover Dam Courtesy of the University of Nevada at Reno Oral Histories

Copyright University of Nevada Oral History Program 2002
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Erma Godbey:

So then he got a job with the New Mexico Construction Company, working on building the streets and the sewer system for Boulder City; that’s when he used 4 mules and a Fresno scraper. He was going around and asking everybody for a job. And first they asked him, “Can you drive a Fresno and
4 mules?” Well, heck, coming from Missouri he could drive a mule; he was a Missouri mule himself! [chuckling] So anyway, he said, “Sure.”
They said, “Well, you go way over there and get yourself a mule and a Fresno.” He wasn’t real sure what a Fresno was. It was just a dirt-scraping thing that he had to walk behind (but he’d walked behind a plow, so he knew how to do that) and you’d take it to the edge and dump it. Now, you see, Le Tourneau had all this marvelous earth-moving machinery, but New Mexico Construction was clear back in the 1800s with mules, see? All right.

Before You Build the Dam
Controversy over Naming the Dam
 

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Last updated: September 4, 2002