Copyright University of Nevada Oral History Program 2002
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During the early part of the summer of the
year that the contract was let, 1931, the United
States government put up an employment building
here in Las Vegas; it was across the street
from the present county courthouse. It was just
a one-room shack which was operated by Leonard
Blood, and all hiring had to come through that
one building. And you would have- -for many
months, you would have- -lines of men a block,
or a block and a half long, waiting to get in
for applications for employment. And people
were coming from all over the United States.
It was during the Depression, of course, and
everybody saw Boulder Dam as a place where they
could get work. And during the construction-
-the early days of construction of Boulder Dam-
-we would have Ph.D.’s working on a muck
stick, in the mines or in the tunnels down there,
and people that used to be on Wall Street driving
trucks. And there was a general immigration
into the city of Las Vegas by all these people.
As a result, there were many shack towns that
sprang up. Probably the most notorious was known
as Hooverville, which is right down at the bottom
of the hill that leads into North Las Vegas.
In fact, it was just below the cemetery, and
it had a population of maybe, oh, a thousand
people. And the shacks were build out of most
anything- -tin cans, cardboard boxes, piano
boxes, anything that they could find to live
in. And then there were two communities out
on the road to Boulder Dam. One of ‘em
was Oklahoma City, and the other was Pitcher,
named after the communities in the southwest
from whence came the people that populated the
two towns. One was on one side of the road,
and the other one was on the other side of the
road, near Railroad Pass. And this was the focal
point of most of the disturbances that we had
and most of the murders that occurred during
the early days of Boulder Dam. |
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