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Copyright University of Nevada Oral History Program 2002
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Erma Godbey:

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We lived in a tent in the river bottom. We bought this tent from a widow whose husband had been disemboweled by a shovel handle when he had gone in to muck out after a blast that hadn’t completely blown yet. There was a delayed shot, you might call, or dynamite blast, and it hit just as he was putting his shovel down and it killed him. I don’t know where she went to, or anything.

We also had to get another tent. That tent was the one I cooked and we ate in. Then, we got another tent to sleep in. Between the tents, we spread blankets fastened to clothesline ropes with horse blanket pins so as to make a little shade for the children, because it was so hot down there.

We bathed in the river. Of course, that meant that everybody had to wear some kind of apron or a little shift or something, and bathe the best they could. They dug some wells a little ways back from the river, but I saw that dirty looking utensils were being dipped into the wells until I was afraid to use the water. Of course, people had to use their utensils on campfires to cook.

I told my husband that I just couldn’t see drinking the water out of the wells. The water from the river, although it was pure, was so full of silt that you’d have to leave it to settle before you could drink it. He would get water from the mess halls for the road crew camp.

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Before You Build the Dam	Politics of Building the Dam	Construction of the Dam
Controversy over Naming the Dam	Oral Histories	A Last Look at the Hoover Dam