James L. Hogan interview, March 11, 1978: transcript

UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 1 An Interview with James Hogan An Oral History Conducted by Patty L. Baratti Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 2 © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2020 UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 3 The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 4 Abstract On March 11, 1978, collector Patty L. Baratti interviewed James Hogan (born April 6th, 1909 in Winton Place, Ohio) at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada. In this interview, Hogan talks about his time working with the telephone company in Arizona and moving to Las Vegas, Nevada. He discusses his time working on grazing rights and cattle ranching in Nevada and how planning went to ensure that farms were able to have land to graze their animals. He speaks about dealing with farmers, corporations, and the government and the frustrations he had to deal with before there were set laws about grazing. He also discusses the change from mainly family farms in Nevada to corporations owning much of the farmland. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 5 Narrator is Mr. James Hogan. The date is March 11th, 1978 at 11 a.m. Place is 2528 Sunrise Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada. The interviewer is Patty L. Hines Baretti. 9965 East Cottage Grove, Las Vegas. The project is the Local History Project Oral Interview: Life of a Las Vegas Resident. Alright. Mr. Hogan, would you tell me something about why you came to the state of Nevada and how it came about? Well, my first—my first trip here was by accident. I would say that by accident. It was during the summer vacation coming from the University of Illinois. I came to Arizona—Flagstaff, Arizona for work for a Valhalla Company. The Valhalla Company's main office was in Phoenix and they needed people to work on their different lines they were building and that sort of thing. And we went first to Flagstaff, for just a little while, and then to the Grand Canyon where we worked at the Bright Angel Cafe and the (unintelligible) Hotel, which were the only two buildings there at the time. It was a business of installing telephones, which the company had trained us at. And that was just supposed to be a short time job. That gave out a short while and I had done a fair job for the people and they recommended that Mr. Clark of the American Telephone and Telegraph hire me. So Mr. Clark and our foreman were pretty good friends, so I went from one place to the other within just a matter of hours and went back to work there. We worked then again at Flagstaff and we had something of a freak accident happen there. You see, the—we would work as maintenance. Maintenance of the telegraph linings. The poles would need repairing and then the (unintelligible) would need repairing, and they wired, they pulled them together, tightening up loosening up, whatever it was. And we were doing fine, but it was the foreman's job to figure the time between trains so that no matter where we were, we could get back between the time that UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 6 one train was over the track and when another would go over the track. And we worked with the, what they called the putt-putt at the time, which were gasoline engine powered cars. Well anyway, this one day we had completed our job that we planned to do, and the foreman sat down and he figured (unintelligible) we'll let this train go by and then we can put the car on the, the putt-putt on the track, and we can go back into Flagstaff. Everything was fine. And we did. He had (unintelligible) everything was fine and we were going to have plenty of time. But what he didn't figure was that we were fifteen miles away from Flagstaff and there was quite a bit of upgrade there. And this little power car just didn't have enough power to push it along too fast. At any rate, Mr. Clark was, we got on the track and we were going, heading toward Flagstaff, and Mr. Clark was at the front of the car. He was watching things there. The other fella who was on the crew was asleep and strapped to the car, and I was looking back. And as we passed the tight turn, I could see smoke coming up through the pine trees and I thought that was, wasn't quite right, so I brought it to the attention of Mr. Clark. Mr. Clark turned pale and almost fell off of the thing, and then he tried to get more speed out of the car, but he couldn't do it. We didn't have time to take it off the track, but it was, the thing that was coming was the Santa Fe Limited it was coming real fast. At that time, they really moved along the tracks. At any rate, this thing caught up with us. We had tried to get the attention of the engineer or a fireman, or someone at the engine by throwing off tools. We'd throw off our hat, throwing off shirts, throwing off everything else, trying to get his attention. (Laughs) Finally, we did get his attention about a mile and a half out of Flagstaff. And then he was doing his best to stop the train, but he didn't quite make it. Before he hit the back end of our car, and all we could do was hang on. And now the force of the engine hitting that car, somehow it stayed on UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 7 the track. It didn't, didn't seem to be no danger or (unintelligible) with it, but it was going much faster than it was built to go. But finally the engine backed away from us, or pulled away from us—or we pulled away from it, lets put it that way. We were going faster than the engine (unintelligible). And (unintelligible) so we had no brakes on the handcar. We coached it a mile and a half past Flagstaff before we could get the thing coasted to a stop. And of course, it was quite a business there with the, with the railroad officials, and they were all fussin'. Finally decided to lay off Mr. Clark for whatever time, which they did. And that put us out of a job. But the company decided it wasn't our fault, it was his, so they found a place for us in, first in Seligman and then we came over from there to Las Vegas, where they had a small job. But that was my first time at Las Vegas. It was hot. It was very hot. At, much hotter than the rest of the desert, it seemed. There was no way to cool off. And it wasn't quite a job, but I did, it sort of made a desert rat out of you, I suppose, so I kept coming back until I finished, finished school. Why, I kept coming back to the west whenever I could. And finally, in 1935, I came back to stay. Now, the way I became acquainted with the grazing—the grazing that was going on in the county, which was something which appealed to me. I had (unintelligible). I took a course on agriculture at the University of Illinois. And of course, that was one of my main interests. A friend of mine, Tom Miller, and another friend, Neil McGill, decided they knew me and Tom and, no, it was Neil who was a graduate from the university, so, he just sort of one of the boys, I guess. At any rate, when this Taylor grazing was set up, why they decided they wanted me to work with them on the, on the grazing. No one expected the Taylor Grazing to come out too much even though it was a law. They expected to be sort of a flop. We had other things and were taking care of the grazing problems of the open range at that time in the public domain. Now I can't recall what the name of that was, but it was handled through the General Land Office. And UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 8 of course, the people in Washington didn't know what was going on in that particular area too much. They would come out once in a great while, I suppose, to see what it was all about, but for the most part it was bookkeeping and trying to do something on the open range. But, really wasn't much done until they came along with the Taylor Grazing Act. The Taylor Grazing Act then put a control on the uses of the public lands. That Taylor Grazing Act covered most of the things—the laws, the rules that they were trying to put together to bring the porter out of chaotic conditions. There were several years of sheep wars, sheep and cattle wars along the, mostly in Utah, along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to oh, wherever they'd be. It would extend too in Nevada and to the northern part of California. And these I think were the things that gelled up in Colorado also. These were the things that gelled up the Taylor Grazing Act. Taylor was I think a senator from Colorado, and that's where this thing picked up its name. But there were a lot of, a lot of problems in this first Taylor Grazing Act. A lot of the things had built up that just weren't realistic. So then our own senator, Pat McCarran, was really the grandfather of this, of bringing order out of this, this whole business. This whole problem of trying to get order on the public range. They—it did help to settle down the sheep and cattle wars. And they were real. They were quite real. And the sheep men claimed they were here first, because the Indians had had sheep long before cattle were known. The cattle were introduced quite late really, after the, after the Civil War. So, maybe in the 1870s or 1880s, somewhere along there. And they (unintelligible) cattle men from, mainly from Englishmen, are the ones who started the cattle ranches. And they and then, their argument was of course, their big fight was the cattle wouldn't graze where sheep had been. But that was just an excuse, I’m sure, for today, cattle and sheep graze together. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 9 (Unintelligible) that happens, that just doesn't happen to be true. But anyway, it was something that was, kept the, kept the thing going as fights. Now to get some, start with something, they had to plan what, or know what rights people had, different people. Sheep men claim so much rights. Cow men claim so much rights. And I use the term cow men rather than livestock people because there were so few horse farms that they weren't even considered to start with. There are quite a few, more now, at that time there were a few sheep. Navajo sheep. There were, which were wool sheep. And there were goats and cattle. So, they were, we had our ideas gelled down to pretty much cattle and sheep. Sheep and a goat were called the same thing. That they, we, supposed that they ate about the same thing. That was the best we could do with what we had. And the cattle would, would eat something different. They would have cattle like grass, sheep, and goats of course, (unintelligible). So we had to come up with something, and we had our base as an animal unit month. Well that animal unit month, went, met with (unintelligible) a cow for one month. And that's the way we based this. Now, we had the sheep of course. The goat didn't eat that much. Mm-hmm. And we had as our base there, a five sheep would equal one cow. Later on we had to change something there, and that was with the horses when they, we realized we had to consider the horses too. And we, when we had settled those, we took those at one and a half, one and a half (unintelligible) a month for a horse. So, it was one in there for a horse, one for a cow, and five for sheep. Now, I'm sure a lot of people would say well, why did you use less for a horse than you did for a cow? Because they're about the same size and it wouldn't take much to support them. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 10 Mm-hmm. At that time, it seemed like the thing to do because a horse ranged so much farther from the water. And we had to plan things pretty much around the water hole. How far can a cow travel and still come back to water, and still feed? How far can a horse go and come back to water and still feed? A horse will go quite a lot farther than a cow and for that reason, we had the balance set up, and it worked. It worked very, very good. I think it would still hold today. Whether it's still used today I don't know. But I think it was a real, good sensible thing to work with. We worked with our grazing boards on this. Our grazing boards were set up as a, just as a grazing board to start with. And we weren't close to those people because they were the people who were on the range. They knew what was going on. They knew the feed that was in certain areas. They knew this area would support more livestock than that one. And they knew just about what the cattle and the sheep would eat. So, therefore, it was something we worked very, very close with them. They were called in later times, they were called an advisory board. And then, still they were called something else, and then still later they were eliminated, entirely. So, now I think they have them back here again, but I don't know what they call them now. At that time though, they really had a vital part in decision making? They were the boss. They were the ones that we knew that we, well they were acquainted with the law. And as they had to be the livestock operators and you know they weren't too well acquainted with the law or what the intent was, or what we were trying to do, or trying to bring chaos out of the big picture, because all they could see was, you know, naturally all they could see was their own localities. Mm-hmm. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 11 (Unintelligible) They wouldn't be able to see the big picture and where they would making laws, you can't make just for one person. Mm-hmm. You have to make it fit the whole, big picture. We depended on them. They knew what they were doing and we listened to them. We would ask them if they had any problems at all. We would ask them how does this fit in your operation? Well, that worked very well. They were quite vital, vital for us at that time. Now, we had to have something else, and that is, what was their demand? Now their demand was a term used at that—how much did you think that you have a right to? After all, there was only so much land. There was only so much grass would grow. And everybody would—felt that they had a right to it. And you couldn't quite do it that way because that's where the problem started in the first place. You were beginning to run out. So you had to, had to divide it up, and you had to try to divide it up as honestly and as fairly as could be done with all the information you had. Well this, this demand then would be met, this and this man said, "Mr. Jones said I had my cattle herds out there for sixty years. This farm has been in the family a hundred years, whatever. And I've had three hundred head out there." Well fine, that is a demand. That is what he demanded as a use. Another man said, "I got fifty." Another was saying, "Well, I've had a thousand." And we would take the demands, and that's all that was, was just a demand. It meant nothing more than that. That is what they thought they had a right to. Then, we would work with the boards, and the board would be their neighbors, so these boards were also elected by these people. And they knew about what had been going on for say, thirty or forty years. So they would say, "Well, look Joe, I know you didn't have 300 head out there. You couldn't have. Let's go over this thing." So that (unintelligible) or maybe "No, you're UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 12 wrong. I did have it." They finally hashed the whole thing out. We'd have, we'd have meetings on the porch trying to, trying to adjudicate this range. And that's what it was. The adjudication of the range. Well, alright, we had that then. And then we could balance that out. We could take their demand and then we'd have to figure the carrying capacity of the range with the demand and the carrying capacity. We could then plan well, this particular range will carry so many head of cattle or sheep or horses for so long. It will support that many. Now when you're talking about carrying capacity, that means again, how much can livestock eat and be supported in the way that there would be with all normal things taken into consideration? And will the graze breakdown with it? Will it finally deteriorate? What will happen if you do carry on with say, 300 head, where only 100 head should feed? Well, we finally balanced that up by getting back to the animal unit month. Then we could—we had to figure we could work quick. And voluntarily, people voluntarily then would come up with this (unintelligible) just won’t carry that where we are overcrowding it. It is breaking down. And we better do something about it. And then it would balance out in this way, this, two different ways. One would be that so many head were allowed on the range, so much time of the year, and then the rest of them whatever they had in the way of extra livestock, or whatever was left of the year, they would have to take into a corral someplace and feed them hay or whatever. So if an area was not breaking down, it didn't show signs of breaking down, then it was going to be able to carry the amount of livestock that had been grazed on it all the time. Well these people would cull, this grazing was culled so many head then for a year long. Mm-hmm. So you could raise them all year long. And all through though, we had to come up with some kind of protection, something of a factor there, where we could play with. So that if we had a UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 13 condition where there was an area that was extremely dry for one year and not for another, normally it would carry, if it got—it would be extremely dry say for a certain year, or then we'd have something that we could work with so that we could ask the ranchers to take their stock and off the range for a while until the range had the chance to recuperate. Well, you had quite a bit of cooperation then on a personal level between the livestock people and the grazing boards. Oh yes, we did. Yes. We, all of the people who were in the business at that time knew, knew the livestock business. And the range boards and the people who were there as the cow men or sheep men, they knew that we knew. So therefore, it was easy to talk the same language. Mm-hmm. And everybody recognized that there was, there were problems, it wasn’t, the ranges weren't going to last another generation. We went on. So— Did you handle just a specific part of the state or did this cover the whole state of Nevada? My work at first was with the northern part of the state, out of the Reno, out of Reno. Reno was our regional office, we called it. That's where headquarters were, to keep everything lined up in the way of federal funds and true interpretation of the law and that sort of thing. They had lawyers in the group who were also stock men and mining men. (Unintelligible) was one, so was Neil McGill also. Not a practicing lawyer Mm-hmm. But he had studied law not only at Cincinnati and California, but also (unintelligible). I think he was, his bachelor’s degree was from Yale, I think. Not certain of that. In the case of Tom Miller, he was also from, his bachelor’s I think was from Yale and then he'd studied law at some college in the, in the east. See, our colleges in the west were not good at that time, so even though the UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 14 McGill's had been an old, old, old family in Nevada, the grandfather himself had started the town McGill up by Ely, and Millers grandfather, Tom Millers' grandfather bought the big holdings of farmer, senator (unintelligible) at Tonopah, and he built the Miller, the old grandpa Miller, built the Tidewater and Tonopah Railroad down through Death Valley. Mm-hmm. Reaches in back of—back up Pahrump. Mm-hmm. And that part of the (unintelligible) I've had quite a plan I think following that trail now, but I do have a map around here some place that shows it. And anyway, that's the way that family started. They were from the Tidewater Company. The Tidewater families, that's where the Tidewater came in. Mm. They were from the Tidewater families of old Virginia. So there was a lot of— So even though these men were eastern educated, they were originally from this area out here and they were, they knew the country and how it had to be dealt with? (Unintelligible) Yes. They were really the true, true pioneers in this part of the world. And nearly all of them, of course, like all of those at that time almost were military men. Mm-hmm. Nearly every one of them. So roughly (unintelligible) part of living Did you spend a lot of time in the office when you were first working, or was this a lot of field work that you had to do? UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 15 It was both. It was both. We had very few people. I was one of the original six who was hired. And oh, within what, five or six years I guess, we had 265 I believe it was. Now how many they’ve got, lord I don't know. I have no idea. (Laughs) They got 'em all over the place now. The (unintelligible) the country doesn't look bigger actually. And the problems haven't gotten any—in fact there should be a great deal less, because we had to start with, with nothing. We had to start from (unintelligible) work. But we could get a whole lot more done because we did have a lot more cooperation with the livestock people, and we were mostly concerned with the livestock people. We recognized that, they recognized that it was (unintelligible) of multiple use at a later time with mining and that sort of thing. But we didn't want to—because of the laws of the (unintelligible) controlled mining, we didn't want to get bogged down in that. We talked about it plenty of times, but we didn't want to get bogged down, because even at that time, just a simple thing like prospect would be anything that would be say, start for a patent, would be having control of something like 3,000 laws. Mm-hmm. And the organization set up at that time through I think the Department of Commerce was the Bureau of Mines. I should say the Bureau of Mines I think remained about 1905 or some such a time. And all of that (unintelligible) control by the commerce or (unintelligible) by the agriculture, then of course that sort of extended off to the west. There wasn't, the interior wasn't recognized as a controlling force at that time on that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. You know, really (unintelligible) isn't interior work. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 16 It's more separate, each one separate entity working on a particular field rather than under one heading like the Department of the Interior or something. Yes. At any rate, we wanted to stay with the, we wanted to stay with the use of the public domain, and the big use of the public domain was grazing. Mm. They, everything that fitted in there (unintelligible) today. We have recreation and that sort of thing. It wasn't that much of a problem at that time. People would go out and they'd prospect, and they'd go out and they'd hunt rocks just like they do today. And or they would like to go out and camp in the (unintelligible), fine. That was alright. That was, you were glad to see them once in a while. You'd stop your work with the, with the open public domain, and by George, it was nice to see that there was somebody around. It was just— Just wasn't that many people using it as there is today. (Laughs) After all, there were only about 90,000 people in the state at that time. Mm-hmm. And now, how many are there now? Who knows that? You can't even count. (Laughs) You can't keep up with the count. (Unintelligible) When did you start dealing more with the multiple use of land? The multiple use then came when the great demand came for, it was known as a small tract. Small Tract Law. The Small Tract Law had been written several years, several years ago. But it wasn't, it wasn't used until about 19, about 1949 or '50 along in there, where a great demand came for people with families or whatever to apply for (unintelligible) under the small tract act. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 17 The small tract (unintelligible), they had been trying once before. It had been on the books, but it just wasn't used because it didn't seem to, it wasn't time for it, you know, I suppose. But that is about the time when multiple use started. A—well, the thing we know as multiple use today was not, not even considered at that time. But I think that that was the, where people—the public awakened to the fact that we would have to consider all uses of the range. Did this make it a lot more difficult then, to manage the grazing problems? It shouldn't have. It shouldn't have, but it did. Because of a lot of the extra things that were built into, into the trying to administer it. Mm-hmm. There were many things that were put there that should never have been considered. It could've been a simple job, which it was to police the, police the range. That was simple enough. We'd use that in, back in the 30s, and we had people we called Range Riders. And they actually did police the range. They were—would work with the stock men, they would work with anyone else who would want to use the range, you know. And their main job was to keep the main range from being abused, keep fights down between neighbors, and that sort of thing. And they did a good job. And that same idea could've been carried on, right on through. They didn't, they weren't a policeman as such, but they did have police powers if they ever had to use. Mm-hmm. Of course, I don't know of any abuse of the police powers at that time. There again, they stayed pretty much with the cowboy type and they pretty much, an outdoor man myself understood just what the, what people would like to do, what they wouldn't like to do, and he would (unintelligible) whether something was being abused or no. And it was usually a case of just talking to someone and saying, "Let's correct this." (Unintelligible) Now maybe that doesn't UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 18 always work. Maybe we got more people (unintelligible) so maybe in that way it didn't work for the issues. You didn't have the power motorcycle (unintelligible) quite a problem to tear up the range. That sort of thing. You didn't have the, you did have an understanding, because there weren't so many people because they did live with the company that the (unintelligible) is fragile I'd say. Mm-hmm. I think that's what I want to say there. But if you turn it up, you know, it takes longer to come back than if you have a (unintelligible) Mm-hmm. So that would be something I would say would be a problem (unintelligible) and all that kind of stuff. So other than that, I couldn’t see. What kind of changes did you see in the ownership of the ranching and grazing here in the state over the years that you've been here? Well at one time, when I started with this, it was all family. It was owned by families. The ranchers for three or four generations had raised their families. And on these ranches, (unintelligible) with living because the (unintelligible) economics, golly, it was a big goal. But then, today I think you'll find that most of the, most of the ranches are owned by corporations and the family group has gone out. They, for whatever reason, the I suppose it's because the price was offered by the corporations, the big corporations, foreign owners, say. When I say foreign, I don't mean foreign from the United States, but foreign from the particular company or country, such as here and Lincoln county where we have our bigger farms, you'll find that the company Suba owns big ranches up there. The Nye county will have, let's see, who was the man, the big UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 19 entertainer who owns so much in Australia, Linklater, and in the northern part of the state it will be mostly groups of companies or people from the San Francisco area. Mm-hmm. And when you'd have something like that, well that's not quite right. It's not the best form of country. Because (unintelligible) ranches and the tax dollars. And doesn't help the economy if (unintelligible) so I don't suppose I should say what I said. It doesn't. Perhaps there's something that I don't know. But my observation of it is, is that it hasn't. It hasn't helped it at all. When did the Bureau of Land Management come into handling the grazing and livestock problems here in the state of Nevada? Well the, first of all we had the, the organization was set up under the Taylor Grazing. Then within a short time, about a year or two, it was called the Division of Grazing. And that meant it was a division of some service that was held as a service through the Interior Department. Then within the matter of another year or two, we had the grazing service. Now the Grazing Service kept that name and handled all of the matters on the public domain with excepting the (unintelligible) until 1946. Now we had, before that, we had what they called the Hoover Commission. This was set up I believe by (unintelligible) I've forgotten. Anyway, we’d have to look back in history to see who was in the Hoover Commission. The Hoover Commission recommended that the land office, general landowners, and the grazing service combine to make the Bureau of Land Management. And the argument was that the land office, the general land office it was called, was, their main job was doing the (unintelligible) and geological surveys, and a disposition of the federal lands. Disposition of federal lands to private ownership. And they felt that it was a overlapping of effort. Mm-hmm. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 20 But it really wasn't. But that was their way of looking at it. Of course, former President Hoover was, had some weight with these politicos of the time even though he was on the opposite side of the fence. He was a, he was a Republican, and the Democrat president had appointed him, but I think it was one of the biggest mistakes that they ever made, when they combined those two and called it the Bureau of Land Management. That was finally gelled up under the Nicholson Act of 1946. Nineteen forty-six. No that doesn't seem right either. That must be. Nineteen forty-six. (Unintelligible) check on that a little bit. At any rate, the land problems and the small tracts business and all that sort of thing came into it and there were of course, they made lobbies, made real estate lobbies and were quite a power. They jumped right in and were attempting to muddle up all of the, all of the government lands in the country. They tried that right off, right away. Right from this valley, we had quite a problem with it. I recognized it because I had been sent down to the main office at Los Angeles and for the problems, some kind of land problems that we had at the time. And you know, we didn't quite understand all of the land laws, and they had the manager down there who was up on them pretty well. So I went down for a few days to get our problem squared away, and on the way back, saw another small tract was working in Yermo and Barstow and Twenty-nine Palms, and when I came back, I reported to my boss, who was Mister (unintelligible) and oh, he said "Jim, this might be a problem. We're looking at a big one." But he was busy. He was busy with the grazing board, getting a grazing board (unintelligible) set together. (Unintelligible) and he just said, "You just go ahead and take care of that." And help get this board problem off your hands. And he said, "You go work on them tomorrow." Okay. So, I took it from there that he didn't want to be bothered with it and it got to be the biggest problem we ever had. Mm-hmm. UNLV University Libraries James Hogan 21 Before a matter of months was passed, they were four men and they formed a new corporation here in town, and I won’t nam