Patricia Lappin interview, February 26, 1980: transcript

UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin i An Interview with Patricia Lappin An Oral History Conducted by Nancy Bright 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 Patricia Lappin ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2019 UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin iii 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 Patricia Lappin iv Abstract On February 26, 1980, Nancy Bright interviewed school teacher, Patricia Lappin (born April 14th, 1924 in Denver, Colorado) at Robert L. Taylor Elementary School in Henderson, Nevada. The interview covers Boulder City, Nevada around Hoover Dam. The two discuss the different gambling habits between Southern Nevada locals and Las Vegas tourists. During the latter half of the interview, the two speak at length about the impact of nuclear waste on Nevada. Lappin explains the unique issues that Southern Nevada faces as one of three states to accept nuclear waste. UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 5 The person being interviewed is Pat Lappin. The time of the interview is 2:30 PM. The date is February 26th, 1980. The place of the interview is Robert Taylor School in Henderson, Nevada. The name of the collector is Nancy Bright. The address of the collector is 1130 University Road, Room 220. The project is Oral History: Moving to Boulder City. Okay, go ahead. Okay, we—my dad was (unintelligible) was docked from the dam at Coulee Dam, and when (Unintelligible) transferred to Panama, why, my dad transferred down here. So we transferred in September of 1941. No housing available, all the houses were filled up because it was a government town. Very close tied town. So we lived in a (Unintelligible) Court, it was called a (Unintelligible). Not a motel, but a (unintelligible). It consisted of, as I remember, one room, and a little kitchenette off to the side and then a sleeping porch. And my—there was one big double bed and chairs and tables sitting on one room. And then my two sisters and I, slept out on the sleeping porch. I could remember—everything was stored from the government warehouse, which was about a mile away. So whenever, when it got cold, we would trudge over to the warehouse, go through all of our belongings, and bring back some more to the (Unintelligible). One thing I do remember was in those days, you got milk in glass milk bottles. We used to make pies and roll out the pie crust using the glass milk bottles. There's a gas stove in there, and it was often crowded in there, we lived there for three months, and then last December, we moved into government housing, and then December 7th, why, Pearl Harbor came in. And that really closed up the town. There just wasn't any housing available at any place. So most of it was like government housing? Was all government housing. We owned—there was only well, the user down at the dam—Bureau of Power and Light, has houses. The Reclamation had houses. Park Services had houses UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 6 down by the lake—they had one house down by the lake and a few houses in town. And then the bureau mines, who were step children, they decided that if you didn't work for the government, you didn't live there. I see. It was strictly government. No gambling, no prostitution, no— So none of that was here? No, not even Boulder City—there was a gate when you went past railroad, there was a gate, a government gate, and you could not, the guards there, if they thought that you were bringing in liquor, they would search your car, they would have a great big pile of bottles broken, from where they had taken 'em out of the cars and broken them. (Unintelligible) Government reservations. Boulder City's a government reservation so it was against the law to bring 'em. Now on the edge to Boulder City, leading down into the back of Henderson Here, there's a canyon here called Bootleg Canyon— (Laughs) And that's why it's called Bootleg Canyon, because they bootlegged liquor into that. You'd say they were all kitchen drinkers in Boulder City. It was a very tight town and in fact, (Unintelligible) who was one of the managers, early managers, if he drove by, and he didn't think your lawn was cut too enough, he would send down some laborers from reclamation and have them cut your lawn and take it out of your pay. So you had to keep your houses tidy and stuff like that? Hmm. Pretty strict. Never ask, it was a dictatorship, it really was. Of course, during the war years, nobody cared that this was—this was before that, before we moved. When we were at Coulee Dam, there were UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 7 workers who had worked at Coulee Dam because that was the first. You know, they said there wasn't any company in the world that could handle Boulder Dam. It took Six Companies to put together to handle the building of Boulder Dam. Was this when you married to your husband? No, this is before I was married. So this has been like your father—? So we moved from Spokane down to Coulee Dam, and then from Coulee Dam, down to Boulder City. Did you move because your father had gotten a job? Yes, uh-huh. Because he had—but many of the workers had moved from Boulder Dam up to Coulee because that was the second big dam. So we knew kind of what we were getting into before getting down here. I anticipated riding the bus from Boulder to Las Vegas. Mm-hmm. For high school, because this is what had happened each year. The year I moved down was the—every year they added another year to the high school. This was the senior year they added the year I moved down. So I was in the first graduating class. So high school only went from certain classes and then finally they had a graduating class? First it was freshman classes, and then sophomores, juniors, and seniors were bussed into Vegas. And then the next year, they included sophomores, and then the next year they included juniors, and then the last year they included seniors. So finally you guys—(Laughs) Yes, well, I didn't get down until the senior year, but yes. That's well. How did you feel good about being the first class? Or? UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 8 Well, I don't remember that we ever thought very much about it! That's just the way it was. It was kind of nice not to ride the bus back and forth because it didn't—it took, oh. It took them about an hour and a half. I never did ride the bus. But it probably took them an hour and a half to go by bus. They would've gone into Las Vegas High. So that was the only high school in Vegas. Mm-hmm. We didn't play—Boulder City didn't play, yes we did play, but Las Vegas—in the years after, we didn't because Vegas got too big. So you attended Las Vegas High and then? Just Boulder—just Boulder was all. Boulder City. Mm-hmm that's all. So your classes were pretty small then after all? Yes, eighteen in our graduating class. Have schools changed a lot? Like have you noticed—? Oh, I guess. I don't know that the schools have, but the kids have. There are a lot more verbal, they can talk a really good story. I don't think, they don't have the opportunity to get any judgement is the problem. I find that, now when I taught third grade, we used to take the kids out to the Mormon Fort, all the time. And you could show them pictures, they see pictures of cows on TV, but once they get out there, that's something different. And every year, we would have some kid that swore off mouth. And they'd swear they came out from the inside of a cow. No matter how much you tell children, unless they have the actual experience, they have a hard time understanding. I believe on little girls wouldn't drink water from this faucet because it came out of the ground. (Laughs) (Laughs) "It was dirty!" It was dirty to her. UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 9 Mm. And I tried to explain to her that's where all water comes from, you know. It doesn't all come from the tap. Yes. But she doesn't— Little kids have a great imagination. Well, that's true, but on the other hand, they're so far removed from what actually happens. Hmm, that's true. You know, they get some of the weirdest ideas, just weird. So we did move down and then war was declared, so they closed down the town pretty much, except for (unintelligible) really started getting bigger because they were doing a lot of government—in fact, they did the research for basic Magnesium out here. On manganese. What's that? It's what they use in the space probes now because it withstands a very, very high temperature. In fact, that's the reason for Henderson, was because the plant was built here. When it was first built in nineteen-something, there was nothing here but desert. Just desert. And then they started laying—what seems as if one day they were laying out the plaques and the next day the buildings were coming up. When the shift workers would get off, if you were coming home from Vegas, you might just well forget it, because they took that folk—they—it was just a two lane high way, and they would take up both lanes of the high way going into Vegas. There's no way that you can back this way. Not until the shift had changed. And it's all two lanes now? And they all rode back in that direction. Two lanes wide, going out. UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 10 That was it! Wasn't until then, the Charleston was paved. Charleston was just a dirt road. And it wasn't until they started using it for construction trucks. And then they paved it. And so mostly that work and stuff— (Unintelligible) Not so much, no. Because everybody that worked there lived in government housing so they worked for Bureau of Reclamation or Bureau of Mines, Bureau of Power and Light, Bureau of Parks Services— Did the war change a lot of that, like—? Not—not until after— Industry-wise? Not until after the war was over. No, even now, all we are, unless you worked for Reclamation or one of the government services, we were just a bedroom town for Vegas. And lots of retired people now. Oh, lots of retired people? A lot of retired people. So you like had a lot of people in Vegas? Yes. We gained quite a few people who were living out at the university. It was quiet? Well, they like a smaller town atmosphere, I think some of them do. That's true. So how did your father like, get interested in? Well, he was always a photographer. He had worked one way or another in photography. He was a projectionist in the movie theatre while I was growing up. And then the Depression days came UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 11 and then others just didn't go to (unintelligible) that much. They posted down—he held a variety of different jobs. And finally he took an exam for Bureau of Reclamation photographer. And when he passed it, and when an opening came, then we moved down there. I moved there my sophomore year, no. I finished my sophomore year in Spokane and I spent my junior year in Coulee Dam. It was the first time I had ever lived in a construction town and it was a nice town. Everybody has a job. Everybody is busy. There's—everybody is a worker. There isn't anybody griping about the government owes me living or this sort of thing, you're not there if you don't have a job. So for us, it was very nice. Sometimes we would eat over in the mess hall and they had coupons, books that you would buy at the beginning of the month, or whenever their payday was, and then they had different denominations. Dollar, twenty-five cents, thirty-five—punched 'em all around. So for big treat, we got to go out in the mess hall every once in a while. Mm-hmm. They fed the construction workers in that dormitory, the same at Boulder Dam. Big dormitories that fed the construction workers in the mess hall. Did your mother work there at all? She worked there after we were grown, she did. She went to work as a secretary, but it wasn't until oh, well I guess, my two sisters, one of them was still in high school. By that time I was in college so. (Laughs) So was this job necessarily, like each step of the dam and to photograph it? To photograph it, and then later on, it was any dignitaries that came along, the hundreth-thousandth visitor to the dam, this kind of thing. Plus, Reclamation has comps to dredging system going on. They work upstream and downstream constantly, so this was really his home base. He would go down as fall as (unintelligible) and then at that time, Reclamation had plans to UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 12 build, oh I don't know how many dams upstream. And then bridge canyon was one, I remember that was cancelled because of an environmental protest. But still on the books, Reclamation hasn't given up. Hmm. Power, yes. And in fact, I just read in 1892 I think it is, with all the original contract, with all the users on the dam. They have to renegotiate the contract now. So whether they will, will be interesting to see how it comes along. So your father was there when they finished the dam? It was finished, well, I guess they were still moving one or two of the generators. Boulder Dam was overbuilt. It was the first dam that was ever built and so they were extra cautious and they put in things that they never in the world needed just to be safe. So one of the things was the needle house down there. Ever since, that has been a spectacular view because on each side, the canyon, the needle bells come out here and the water would spread out into the river. But they never did need them so they've taken them all out one by one. Has it changed a lot since then? Not the dam so much, in fact there's still people who go across the dam and get up to Boulder City and they say, "Where was the dam?" (Laughs) And then someone'll say, "Don't you remember crossing the water?", "Oh, you mean the big bridge?" (Laughs) They don't make the connection at all. They don't. It's a hard dam to stand back and look at, especially if you're in your car, you don't really see that it is a dam. Coulee Dam is built in flatter UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 13 country. You can stand, almost drive down to the base. And when you cross the bridge below the dam, then you can look upstream and see the dam, but you can't do that with Boulder because it is the bridge too. It is the means across. We used to have railroad tracks that ran right down the middle of the road. Have you been down there yet? Yes. Okay, you know how big the turns is? The big horseshoe that you see just before you come in? There used to be railroad tracks right down the middle of that, and that's where they got the (unintelligible) and that's where things came down like that. It used to be really slippery sometimes, (unintelligible) on the tracks. So did a lot of people construct that? Oh yes, it was the job in the United States because these were Depression Days when the Dam was going. People came from all over the United States to try and get a job. If you had a job on the Dam, you were somebody. It, of course, a friend of mine talks about, they would go in and eat breakfast in the mess hall, and then they had long tables, so that they could make their own lunches. They would go down and make their lunch and then make five, six, seven, eight more sandwiches and pick up five or six oranges, apples, whatever, this is people who lived in Vegas, and then, at the end of the day, when they would get off shift, went back to Vegas, and they would go to the park that was in the post office, where people slept on the lawn, because they didn't have money. They didn't have anything. They didn't have food, they were starving. And at first, they would get out of their cars and handout and (unintelligible) The dam was government funded right? Yes, the government borrowed money, it was from, you know, funded by public (unintelligible) Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light, and my (Unintelligible) for their power. And this UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 14 power and this pays off the bond—at the end of the day when they got off shift and went back to Vegas, and they would go to the park that was in front of the post office, where people slept on the lawn, they would just drive circles and then would just throw these packages of food out to these people. Just like starving dogs or something like that, it was bad, bad times. When did you meet your husband? He—oh, I didn't meet him until a year or so later when I graduated from high school and I had gone to work the Bureau of Mines to get me enough money to get to college. (Laughs) So I worked there a year. He was working as an electrician there. So when we had any heavy work why, we were told to call the electricians for any heavy lifting. Why, they'd come down and do all our lifting for us. So that's the way I met him. It was experimental plant. It wasn't mining underground, it was paving out materials and different kinds of metals. How long after that were you guys married? Well, I went away a year to the University of Washington, and then I came back and we got married. So you went to Washington University? Seattle, I was in Seattle for a year. Mm-hmm. Is that where you got your teacher's degree? No, then I had a baby, a little girl. And I went to high school—I had only had one year. And the University of Washington said she had to kept telling me that I had to have two years of a language. I planned on going back up to the university at Washington, so I went back to high school for a year of Latin after my little girl was born, and then about 1956, UNLV—well, it was, University of Reno had extension courses in Las Vegas. And we met in the basement of Las UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 15 Vegas High, and in churches, and just, anyplace where we could get a room. And they sent people down from Reno that taught. So that was like Nevada's University or whatever? Well, the university up at Reno is quite old. It's over a hundred years old. They did send extension courses down here and it just gradually built up, and then as Clark County started having more people in it, more people than what they had in Washoe County, then they could command the funds for buildings down here. Maude Frazier Hall was the very first one. It sat out way out there, all by itself. And every time you'd come out from town on Maryland Parkway, there was a dip where, I think it's Death Creek Wash. But if it rained, forget it, you couldn't get out of there! They were isolated. So that was the university? That was the university. That was it: Maude Frazier Hall. And then Archie Grant came next, and those two buildings stood out there for a long, long time. So what year was this one? I don't remember what year they started the build. I remember—'56 is the first year I took courses there. And I didn't get my degree until '66. Only it took me—well no, I got—in '62 I got—I was going to say that it took me twenty years to get through college. By the time I graduated high school and the time I graduated from college. In those days, you had to go up to Reno, you had to spend so many hours on the Reno Campus before you could get your degree. So I had to go up to Reno for three summers, I think it was. So no matter what, you had to go. No matter what, yes, you had to go up to finish it. After you graduated, did you just start teaching? UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 16 I started teaching before I graduated. They would give special certificates and—so I substituted for three years while I was taking courses. And then I started working about two years steady before I got my degree. You always been an elementary teacher? Always. And I've always taught at this school. Oh at this school? Yes. So this will be my eighteenth year here. Different grade levels, but in the same school. I see you've taught at— Yes, well, I started teaching the first grade and then I moved to the third grade, and then I did team-teaching with a third grade teacher for seven to eight years, and that was nice. And then I moved into Title-1 Math, which is like, remedial math. Has the system changed a lot during past eighteen years? I think yes, schools no longer have the authority that they used to have. What do you mean? Like, discipline, or? Yes, like discipline for instance. And then it used to be if a teacher or principal said something that was it. A parent would never challenge. But now— (Laughs) They make all sorts of excuses for the kids. But yes, I think there's been a lot of changes. Some for the good, some for the bad. The thing I feel badly about is, I think a lot of kids are getting short changed because we push them so fast. They have to learn so many things in such a short time. They just don't give them time anymore for that. And this is one of the reasons that this remedial math group we're in is very time consuming. Because these children need to move all UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 17 these things around, they never see what happens. They just see the results, but they don't know what they're doing. Do you think that's why there's more special programs? That, and I think the fact that there's come to be a realization that every child is entitled to a public education, you know. Every child, no matter what. Do you think like now, there's more like, a public education, not necessarily like—where people had to pay for their education? And now it's not necessarily so much paying? Well, maybe. I think people expect more of the school system. In fact, the school system is the only social service that a lot of people run into. This is their only contact and they expect the school to do everything for them. (Unintelligible) A lot of folks expect the schools to feed their child. In fact, we serve lunches and breakfasts here. They expect bus service. When I was going to school, I had to pay my own bus in Spokane. You could buy tokens, student tokens, but you had to pay it your own way. Every family paid it your own way. It wasn't expected that the school system would pay it for you. Pretty rough sometimes, I guess. Well, in a way, but it made you responsible for yourself, and it involved responsible people rather than people who think that somebody else is going to take care of it. Somebody else will do it, all I have to do is contact the proper agency and they'll do it for me! Do you think this is why sometimes, like, kids don’t—like when they get something, they don't necessarily—like if you earn it, you seem like you're getting it by yourself. And then like, if someone gives it to you— You don't appreciate it as much. Yes. UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 18 I think this is one of the reasons that we have so much trouble with materials in school books, papers, pencils, it's because they are giving it to them. And so they don't take care of 'em. Why should they? Somebody will give them another one. We just had a video tape ripped off from our school. The monitor—a color monitor—color TV, and the big cassette, video tape cassette. They knew exactly where to go, they didn't take anything else from the room. But we had another one the next day! Well what good is something—if you replace something right away— Well that's true. Especially if it had to be somebody in that room, that knew exactly where it was located and what to do to get to it. I'm not necessarily saying a child in that room— Yes. I'm just saying that the child in the room talked and somebody listened. Mm-hmm. Do you think, like when you were in college, the value of education, or the price of education, how has it changed to like now, for what we're paying for in college? Of course it's gone up, with everything else. What hasn't? Oh I don't know, I think it depends on the professor. I had just as dull professors as (unintelligible) as you have now. And just as sparkling, provocative, ones as I see now. I just think it depends on the person inside the course. Have you gone back, like, to the university now to take any courses? I—well—teachers are mandated to pick up so many credits every five years, or we don't get our certificates. So we have to pick up six hours of credits every five years. So has it changed a lot? Like? Well, there's an old saying that the best teaching is in kindergarten and the worst teaching is in college. And by and large, I think that's so because people are civilized and tend to sit. They may sleep, but they tend to sit in college classes. Where if you tried to do that kind of teaching in UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 19 kindergarten, and first through third grade, you would have chaos in your room. There would—the children would not tolerate it. But growing up, you get used to it where you just sit quietly, and they may not learn a thing, but at least— They sit quietly. (Laughs) I never could see any reason to come in and sit to somebody tell me what I should've read the night before. Lectures? Lectures, yes. Now some lectures, no. Some lectures—are enrichment. They explain further what you read, but on the other hand, that's contract assumes that the student's done his job on reading too. And I'm not sure that that professor can count on that anymore. That's true, very true. Has like the population, since like Nevada, and the school and everything, the population has grown tremendously? In '41 when we moved here, there were twelve thousand people in the whole state of Nevada. Mm. And when we would travel from southern Nevada, we would know somebody in every town because it was a small population. So if you belonged to any kind of organization, it would include everybody from every town all over the state. So you knew somebody from every town all over the state. It's gotten much larger. Today, when we came over Railroad Pass, and came out into the valley, you could see all the way across the valley, which is a rare thing nowadays. And we never used to think a thing about being able to see that far. You know, now, you come over the hill, and you can see this one cloud that's Henderson and this one cloud that's Las Vegas. UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 20 Cloud (Laughs) I see, that's because of the weather? No, no. This is, mostly it's from car's exhaust. I don't care what they tell me here in Henderson. It doesn't come out of the ground. That's the latest survey they've done. This just all comes out of the ground and collects in the air. But you know, if it was Nevada—it used to be such a small state that your governor practically knew you if not by face, if you belonged to his party, he knew you by name. Mm-hmm. And it wasn't anything not to know your governor. And especially your representative knew you personally, and still does to a certain extent. What were like, the effects on gambling, like, what did you think about? I really don't think—like, if you grow up with it, even when we moved down here, I was thinking, of course I couldn't do anything until I was twenty-one, and by that time, you think, oh big deal, so what? (Laughs) You don't gamble if you live here. It's not—unless you’re involved in the industry. And of course, Boulder City has always been so far removed from any gambling, that you just never think much about it. (Unintelligible) who is the county commissioner now, was brought up in the city and they had gambling all on their mind. I think his attitude with people that live here—it's a business. You're on the other end, not on the gambling end. So it really doesn't affect us one way or another. You get bored to tears when you have to take people into the, you know, they'll come to visit you and you prop yourself up against the slot machine, or go in the lounge and listen to music and stuff. It's a really boring business. (Unintelligible) still the tourist industry back then? There was gambling— UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 21 Yes, there was always—I don't remember the year gambling started, but it was, it was here when we moved in. And in fact, the El Rancho Vegas was the only hotel on the Strip when we first moved in here. Way, way, way out of town, you know. And the people— (Tape one ends) So like tourist industry wasn't necessarily like the big thing? It just like, it just started to build up? It was just starting to build up, yes. It was. In fact, divorces, they were really the big in Reno, primarily. But Las Vegas also. And then of course, right at the end of the Depression, Boulder Dam came along and this gave Southern Nevada a big shot in the air, as far as the local economy went. And then the war—(unintelligible) came long Nellis Air Force Base came. And many men who were stationed at Nellis were discharged, and moved back to Nevada and California. They finally saw what it was like, and they didn't want to live in the snow. The weather, the bad weather. Although I have known people who say they used to have watched golf tournaments in Las Vegas and would come in January and the golfers would be out there with their short sleeves and the snow on their streets would be piled high. They watch this for three or four years and eventually they make up their mind to move. Okay, and since we're on weather, has the weather changed a lot? I don't really think the weather— But it does snow here? Once in a great while it snows sometimes. We had, what, two years ago, they had a snow, and then we had a bad almost hurricane down on the coast, blew down the trees in San Diego. Didn't have snow, had bad snow. So that flew down the whole city of Nevada? UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 22 Wiped it out. Totally paralyzed? Totally paralyzed, that's it. The one thing that I thought was funny about the holding—the stores ran out of bird seed. The people thought about the birds and so they went down and bought seeds for the birds. That's not one of the things I would've thought about, but a lot of people did. Mm. But that's not the first time we had a lot of snow. Maybe every ten, twelve years, and maybe once every three, four years we get a little dusting. It doesn't ever stay on the ground. Get freezing weather every year, but— What about dust storms? It wasn't so bad until there was so much new housing in Vegas. It used to be—do you know what desert pavement is? Mm-hmm. Okay, it used to be that when the wind would blow, because over the hundreds of users we had gotten desert pavement all the way around here. And so we didn't have these terrible dust storms. But then as soon as they started opening up housing tracks, they would just bulldoze all of these streets in and all of this area. Sometimes they'd go, sometimes they wouldn't. But when the wind would blow, it would pick up all that dust and you'd get a horrendous sand storm. And in fact, they would—it would stop people from going across the desert because it's blowing real badly because you can frost up your windshield. With what? With the sand. Uh-huh. I noticed that, like, this weather seems to (unintelligible) UNLV University Libraries Patricia Lappin 23 Yes, I think a little dryer, maybe. And a little hotter. Yes. Have you ever had flooding? There's flooding that goes along. In Boulder, we've always lived in the high part of town. Boulder City was built up on a ridge. Mm-hmm. A granite ridge. Especially to take care of the wind because when they built Boulder, there wasn't any air-conditioning. And in fact, the swamp cooler was invented in Boulder City. So they looked around where (unintelligible) so they built up on this ridge, which meant that they alway