Transcript of interview with Hal G. Curtis by Bill Teepe, February 24, 1977

UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis i An Interview with Hal G. Curtis An Oral History Conducted by Bill Teepe 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 Hal Curtis ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 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 Hal Curtis iv Abstract On February 24, 1977, Bill Teepe interviewed Hal G. Curtis (born 1926 in Galt City, California) about his life in Southern Nevada. Curtis talks first about his work on the Union Pacific Railroad before discussing changes and development in Las Vegas, including development on the Strip and Downtown areas. He also talks about Block 16, the El Rancho Vegas fire, social clubs, and religion. UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 1 The informant is Hal G. Curtis. The date is February 24th, 1977 at 4:30 in the afternoon. The place is Curtis Steel Company, 3619 Industrial Road, Las Vegas, Nevada. The collector is Bill Teepe, 6340 Alta Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada. Project is Nevada History Project Number 1, Oral Interview: Life of a Las Vegas Resident in the Early Days. On the West Side, down there where the federal building is now is, went to school there—them buildings were condemned. When the built the new school, which I think (unintelligible) county office is now. I went to school there and then I went to school at Las Vegas High School. And how long ago was that? Let’s see, ’31 till ’41—’42, I went in the service, got out in 1950. I returned to Vegas and went to work on the Union Pacific Railroad. I think the population was about, oh, 20,000. In 1951, I went into ironwork here in Las Vegas—the union (unintelligible). I’ve been twenty-six years in the iron work, all of it spent in Southern Nevada working—give you an estimate of the growth of this place. We had about thirty structural ironworkers here in 1951 and about seventeen reinforcing ironworkers, and now we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 structural and about a hundred reinforcing. You got anymore—you want some more questions on this, or? Basically, what have you seen of a change in Las Vegas? What do you account for a major change to bring Las Vegas to where it’s at right now? Well, I’d say the climate has one thing to do with it, the gaming another, which is a big, to do with it. And the population (unintelligible). And the one thing is, in Nevada, that we have kept the property tax down, and no state income tax, which has been an incentive for people to move into this area. I don’t think you could really pinpoint the growth on any one specific thing. I would say that gaming had the most of it here because we don’t have too much industry, but the gaming and climatic conditions, I think have most to do with it. UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 2 Back in, say when you were going to high school, what was the population—it’s not spread out like the way it is now—what was here? Well, when I first came here, ’31, I lived on the West Side, which was the finest ground around, but it wasn’t where the finer homes were. The finer homes were, oh, around Third, Fourth, and Fifth Street then, and to the south and the east, and you’re right out of North First Street, you had Block 16, which was prostitution then, legalized prostitution. And then on South Main Street was mostly all railroad, and lived in that area. And the population then was about 5,000 but then there was again flux with the building of Boulder Dam—a lot of people came in here then. And you just had the three schools; you had the Las Vegas Grammar School, which part of it burned down, and the Las Vegas High School, and then you had the West Side School. And whereas they grew during the war when they put the air base in out here, and when they put that Basic Magnesium Plant in out there, they brought in around 6,000 workers, which was where they brought the Black population into; they brought them in during the war to work on a defense plant out there. And then in 1950, you had the gunnery range for Nellis Air Base, which was McCarran Field then, and Indian Springs, and in ’50 they come along, put that atomic energy thing in, which caused another population growth because of the workers needed for the place. A lot of people came in here temporarily to work and stayed. And then in 1950, there about—the hell happened to the plant out there after Basic Magnesium—anyway, they sold this Basic Magnesium Plant, the DPC did, Defense Plant Corporation, to private enterprise. Titanium came in, Stauffer Chemical came in here—American Potash back then, which created most of your growth in Henderson and some in Vegas. And of course, then with the population exploding, you needed an expansion of your sewer, you needed an expansion of your water, and you needed UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 3 expansion of your power. Once they put Clark Station 1, 2, 3 in out here at Whitney, and they put in the Sunrise Plant, then they put in the plants in Moapa. Back in those days about when you went to school, gambling wasn’t too big here at that point—what was the main agricultural—? There wasn’t a (unintelligible)—well, there was a few ranches here, and there was venues around, but I think your gaming became law in ’31 or ’32, and then Boulder Dam came in. Although after the completion of Boulder Dam, this place went in a pretty good slump, and didn’t really come out of the slump till 1939 when we started preparing for World War II. And really, Vegas didn’t get any defense contracts, I think, until late ’40, ’41 when they started building Nellis Air Base. Gaming tourist divorce was about the only thing that kept this downtown going, and the fact that trains came through, other than Boulder Dam for that area through the thirties, see. There was a slump between about ’34 and ’39 there, about a five-year, pretty good slump—had the CCCs in here up at Mt. Charleston. But this city never started growing till during the war, and then after. I would say ’52, it really started growing, ’52 on. After World War II? Oh, yeah, after World War II. After you had been employed by the Union Pacific Railroad, what made you turn to ironwork? Economic, more money. Did you work on Hoover Dam? No, I was just getting here when the dam went in. But it was a matter of economics that I went in the ironwork. And you could see then—if you had any foresight at all—you could see in 1950 that railroads were going to lose the passengers. It wasn’t even paying for itself in ’50. And with UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 4 most of your mail contracts being going to the airlines, and with the advantage of jet using kerosene instead of gasoline, why, you could see the handwriting on the wall the railroad was just going to be just strictly freight operation, which it turned into with the exception of Amtrak. And your truck lines—it was piggybacking the trucks then. It’s like the stagecoach disappeared after the railroad took over, and that’s just exactly what happened with the passenger trains when airplanes took over. Were there any roads coming in and out of Las Vegas? Oh, yes, you’ve always had five highways coming out of here, after Boulder dam; before that, it was dirt, but you had the Salt Lake, the Tonopah, the one going to Arizona, and the one to California—four highways—but you always had them. Back in, like I say, your high schools, the land value or anything wasn’t really that sky high? No, it was based on the economy of the country at the time. Hell, the stuff in here, I would say during the thirties, you could’ve bought it for your own price if you had the money to buy it. Nobody wanted it, nobody had any cash to spend. And then as the supply and demand increased, why, your property would be quoted, and as your inflation increased, so would your land value. (Unintelligible) went up in price? Well, this is true, but if you look back to 1951, an ironworker then was making $2.50 an hour; today, we’re making $12.50 an hour. So, we’ve increased to what percentage is that, 1,100, 11,000? (Unintelligible) 1,100 percent, I guess it is. So, and we have the fringe benefit tied into that, which is probably another four dollars an hour, which we didn’t have. So you might say that there’s been a 1,500 UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 5 percent increase in wages for an ironworker in twenty-five years, and your land values went accordingly. Do you remember any special event here in Las Vegas that really got everybody going, for example, like a president visiting here, or some—? Oh, yes. I remember when Mr. Roosevelt came in, the president that, when they opened Boulder Dam, and Key Pittman was with him, and he came out in the railroad train, went out and opened the dam, and big to-do for the amount of people that was here. I think it was probably the biggest to-do I’d seen around this city, and then I think it was ’36, they put in the Helldorado, which that helps, you know. Do you remember the El Rancho Hotel? Yes. Was it pretty booming back? Oh, yes, the El Rancho was a fine place. It was quite a place. And then after that, all the other major hotels started building? Well, really, you used to have the Red Rooster out there. That was across from where the Sands is now. And then they had the old 91 Club, I think it was. That was in between the Red Rooster and the town. And then they built the Flamingo. That was when Bugsy Siegel come in, built the Flamingo, and I think that was the first we had any hoods moving in on the Strip. They built the Flamingo, and then they built the Frontier—EL Ranch was in there—then they built the Desert Inn. And then Lloyd Lowe, I think, was working for Marion Hicks at the time; Hicks had the El Cortez, he built the El Cortez—Lloyd Lowe was the superintendent. Then they built the Thunderbird. When’d the Riviera go—we put the Riviera up, and then we put the Tropicana up right behind that—that had to be in the fifties. UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 6 Did you work on these projects? I worked on the Riviera, Tropicana—when the old Bingo Club went to the Sahara, my brother had all the iron on that. And I worked on the Sahara, first high rise Sahara. I worked on the Dunes when they built it, and it went high rise later on. When Bugsy Siegel came into town, talking about the hoods and everything, did he feel the pressure and stuff of the hoods, or? Oh, I don’t—it might have touched some people, really, at the time. It didn’t really matter to me one way or the other. I was too damn busy trying to make a living. I’d come out of the service 1950 and got married in ’51. The wife I was married to then was working at the Thunderbird, and I was working a contract, you know, a contract (unintelligible). But I imagine they knew the hoods were around; all we got was hearsay on it, because the only time I ever had any real need to speak to them people is if we were working on the job building a hotel, one of them happened to come up and ask you a question. Other than that, you might see ‘em standing inside a hotel after (unintelligible) see one of the shows. They never did seem to bother the workmen or anybody. You say you live out in Blue Diamond right now? Right. When did you move out there? Oh, four years ago. Four years ago—do you remember the (unintelligible) crashed out in the Spring Mountain? UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 7 Yes, Carole Lombard; she crashed up there by the Potosi Mountain. I think they named it Lombard’s Peak. Yes, she was married to Clark Gable at the time. That was the forties, ’39, ’40, somewhere in there. This time when—was there streets and everything still, when, like, the El Rancho, was it pavement, or was it still dirt road type thing? Oh, the Strip was paved at the time the El Rancho was in there. Of course, now, Tropicana used to be Bond Road, and I don’t think it was paved till after the Tropicana when it got going east and west. And then I think it was paved probably over to Paradise Road. How about Downtown on Fremont Street? They had the Union Pacific Railroad yard down there, didn’t they? Yeah, that was, right where the depot used to be, where the Plaza is, used to be an old depot in there, and they built another one, I think, a new depot in ’36, tore the old beanery down, and then they tore that one they built in ’36 when they put the Plaza in. What was Fremont Street like back then? You had the hotels and (unintelligible)? On the corner of Main and Fremont, you had the Overland Hotel set on the north corner; the Sal Sagev was across the street. And up on the next corner on the same side of the street was the Las Vegas Pharmacy with some rooms up above it, and across the street from it, where the Pioneer Club is now, was the Beckley Building. It had rooms up the street, and then across from the Beckley Building, which would be on the south side of Fremont, was the Mesquite Grocery—Gene Ward had it. Across the street from that was the bank, and then down almost to the corner, you had the Apache Hotel set on the corner of Second and Fremont, and next to it, in between it, was the Boulder Club. And then you had a liquor store in there and some other damn thing, and then across the street from it where the Nugget’s at, right there on the corner where the Nugget UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 8 was, was a bar called the Kiva Bar, and down a little ways from it, coming towards First Street, was a bowling alley and a pool hall that had been an old theater. And then you had the Oasis Café. And I think Lorenzi had a candy shop in there at the time, a sweet shop. And then at Second and Fremont on the other side of Second Street was the White Cross Drugstore, telephone company, Western Union were in there. In a garage, and across the street was a café called Wimpy’s and a service station. And when you got past Fifth Street, there wasn’t much. There was a swimming pool called the Mermaid Pool at the corner of Fifth and Fremont, and there wasn’t much in there. Was there houses starting to be built all around it now? I know that older section of town right in the middle between, like, Charleston is and Fremont Street, around the federal building, that area. Well, that was a school where the federal building is, but there was little houses and cabins around there, and they was mostly owned by schoolteachers, railroad people, and some of the businessmen in town. But there wasn’t too much out—you got past Thirteenth Street, and there was bootleg joint out there on about Thirteenth and Fremont—bunch of tin shacks there. And then Main Street, there was a bootleg joint on it, south of North Main, and you had the Water (unintelligible) Lumber Company in there. There wasn’t much else. I know sometime during the war, they built the Biltmore, which is on the corner of Bonanza and Main—they built that housing tract. And I think during the war, they built that Huntridge Tract, encompassed quite a few houses up above. And I think the Huntridge Theatre—all that was wartime, built during the war somewhere in that era. I wasn’t here when most of it was built. Then there was a housing project on Thirteenth and Stewart Street that was some, I think it was built for defense workers or something back. I think it’s still over there, there’s a bunch of little (unintelligible) houses in UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 9 that area. Most of the real dramatic changes here have taken place from, I’d say, that I’ve witnessed, ’50 on. Out between Charleston and Bonanza Road, I think it belongs to the water company right now, isn’t there some (unintelligible) houses out there, or is that cattle? Well, some of that land was owned by the railroad; some of it was owned by a guy named Smith. And Kaltenborn owned quite a bit of that property, I think, out in there. But see, at one time, we got all our water, artesian. And there was some talk about it being the second largest artesian well in the world—the other one was supposed to have been in Brazil, but I never did have any reason to, you know, check it out or confirm whether it was the truth or not. At this point in the interview, we are going to take a break right now for coffee and stretch our legs. The interview is going pretty well. It seems comfortable for both of us. Mr. Curtis is typically an old timer; he’s just in cowboy boots, he has a dark tan, and a typical steelworker; he’s a well-built man. Okay, if you’ll just turn the tape over and start the other side of the interview. [Audio ends] See, that are up there didn’t build up till after the fifties, I’d say, it filled in pretty good. I know off Bonanza Road there, old Bob Morgan had a ranch that say on this side of Bonanza Road, which Bonanza used to be called Clark Avenue, and they changed—took Clark Avenue, put it Downtown, changed the name of that street to Bonanza—I never did understand it. Were those all dirt roads going out that way, too? Well, when I first got here, Main Street was dirt. They was trying to fix it then. And you had mostly dirt roads. I don’t think they cut Twenty-fifth Street through and paved it till up in the mid-fifties. UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 10 You (unintelligible) when Howard Hughes came to Las Vegas, do you remember that? I remember—of course, Howard Hughes means nothing to me—but I mean, when he came in to buy the hotels and did purchase the hotel, why, I know that the people—these are old time Vegans—that was employed by the hotels. Didn’t figure it was the best move ever made, because that damn near gave Hughes a monopoly on hotels, which a monopoly in any sense of the word is bad. But he had made some visits to Vegas before that, and I remember some talk around the Thunderbird, that somebody went in the men’s room there at the Thunderbird, and Hughes was in there with his sneakers on washing his shirt. So several people went into to witness—from what I hear, I don’t know that this is fact, but pretty good rumor—he was a little eccentric. Back in those days, there were houses of prostitution along the Strip? No, not on the Strip. But here in Vegas? We had it confined to one block in Vegas, which was called Block 16 on the original Las Vegas plat. And that was on First Street, one block off of Fremont North. They had the Arizona Club and the Lulu and four or five other clubs in there, and there was strictly prostitution. They were checked, they couldn’t come off the block, their meals were carried into them. And this went on until the war started, and then the hue and the cry from the politicians to close the houses of prostitution, I think they lost one of the best chiefs of police we ever had, ‘cause he resigned rather than close them—that was Frank Waite. And they closed them, and then they opened them again out at what they call the Meadows, which would be right behind where Montgomery Ward’s is now—that was called the Meadows in there. And then that finally burned down. And then the next one that opened was at Four Mile; they claimed that the sheriff at the time had a UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 11 hand in that—whether he did or didn’t, I don’t know, but Glen Jones was the sheriff then—pretty decent people. And it’s hard for people coming into this country to understand the thinking of the people that grew up here. We grew up with legalized prostitution; we liked it. It was a good thing. And there was less venereal disease, ‘cause women were checked, and probably a lot less children and young people molested on the streets than there is today. But what you have today, and this is just purely my own estimation, is every one of these Strip hotels, you can find all the hookers you want, so you don’t, in a sense, have legalized prostitution, but you have prostitution, if you want to pay the price, but they aren’t being checked like they were if you had legalized prostitution. Only Nye County’s got legal prostitution; Lincoln County’s got legalized prostitution. Clark County doesn’t have it. (Unintelligible) Thunderbird, or Stardust Hotel when the Stardust was built, he was saying he was sure glad that Clark County didn’t have legalized prostitution; the guy sitting next to him, he said, and he’s sitting in the biggest room (unintelligible) in the state right now. That was when the Stardust had the most rooms. But if you don’t put it in print, people don’t think it’s there. I don’t know; I don’t understand it. Well, I work at the Sahara right now, and that’s what they—and I know for a fact that they do, it’s all— Shit, I got propositioned twice in the Sahara. I was in there for a Democratic meeting; I had a badge on. Most of them hookers see a badge on you, they think you’re from out of town. Right. Went down to the bar there and a Black one propositioned me, and I come down for another drink, and a White one propositioned me. And I finally told ‘em, I said, “Jesus Christ, I’m from Vegas.” (Laughs) UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 12 I ain’t from Timbuctoo. But you’re gonna have it. The only thing I think of it, better legalized than it is not legalized. When you first came here, you said you lived down on West Las Vegas; did you move from there down somewhere else? Or did you stay there until you moved to—? Oh, I stayed—that was my mother’s home on Bonanza Road and Clark Avenue to start with. First house above the underpass before that underpass was ever put in on Bonanza Road, but that was her home. I stayed there until I went in the service, and when I came out of the service and got married, I rented a place, and then I bought a place in North Las Vegas when they built the tract there in ’53. And then I bought another home on Houston Drive, which I still own, and then I got another one out by the airport, and a home up in Blue Diamond. Do you still own all these right now? I don’t own the one in North Vegas—I lost it to a divorce—but the other three I own, or bought. How do you like living out in Blue Diamond? I like it—small town. That’s why I moved out; the town’s too big for me. I don’t like lots of people and I don’t like big cities and traffic noise and all that. You know, you grow up—Vegas was small when we were here and grew up. Some people can adjust to it; others can’t. I didn’t ever even try. I just don’t like big cities. Do you remember when they were putting in that Spring Mountain Ranch up there in Blue Diamond? The what? I think it’s called Pahrump Ranch. That used to be owned by an Indian named Wilson. And then he died and left it to them kids of his, and I think they drank it up. And then Laumb of Laumb and (Unintelligible) bought it—the UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 13 radio team, probably never heard of ‘em—the radio team on radio years ago. Laumb bought it, then Krupp’s ex-wife from Krupp’s Steel out of Germany bought it. And I think after her demise, Fletcher Jones and somebody else in town bought it, and they sold it to the state—hell of a piece of property. I went out there one day on a field trip and visited; but they (unintelligible) to this day. I went up and put the swimming pool in after Vera Krupp bought it, when I put the iron in the pool, me and my brother—that was back in the fifties. Hell of a piece of land—there’s a lot of (unintelligible). Blue Diamond used to be a venue up there. I believe the (Unintelligible) used to live up there, I think they did at one time. I went to school with a couple of (unintelligible) attorneys. Do you remember anybody going to school with that—do you remember governors or anything like that? Well, let’s see, John Foley, now, he was in the Assembly and run for lieutenant governor—he was on when Sawyer got defeated. Laxalt and the (Unintelligible) went to school here. (Unintelligible). Oh did he? Yeah, he went to school here. The gal plays on—she played on Gilligan’s Island for a long time. Wells? Yes. Her sister lives next to me at Blue Diamond. Do you remember any big stars coming to town? Oh, yes. Rex Bell’s mother was coming in quite a bit—Clara Bow. We had all the movie stars in and out of here during the thirties, either for a divorce or to come up to gamble. The El Rancho was something really big back in them days. UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 14 Oh, yes, quite a place. I (unintelligible) throw a piano in the swimming pool and I’d jump in there and play it. Is that right? (Laughs) So what else? Did you and your brother go into partnerships? No. Just went off on different trails? Oh, he was ironworkers before I got into the trade. When I got into the ironwork, he went into business and I stayed working iron, and I’m still working iron. And he just got into the steel business? Yes. Well, it all works together. How about the convention center? How about it? (Laughs) Did you work on that? No. No? (Unintelligible) So they probably (unintelligible). I was in Europe at the time they built that, but on vacation over there. I didn’t want no part—it was right in the summer, and I didn’t really want to work on that hot tin roof. Do you remember the racetrack that was here, too? Yes, well he worked on the racetrack; I didn’t, but he did. Oh, I put up some fence around it after it opened. I put up some cyclone fence around it. He worked over there for McNeil, I believe, UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 15 when they originally built it. They brought in an Australian tote system and then they took it out, put an American tote in (unintelligible). But it never did do any good. And then Brown bought the property, and then I think he sold it to the convention center. Do you remember any real disaster that ever happened here? Well, there was one when I was a kid, pretty young. On the West Side, a guy had butane—darn thing blew up and killed quite a few people. Hey Art? Yes? Who was it, had that butane deal there that blew up behind us on the West Side? Was that Myers? Yup. How many did it kill in that? It killed three or four of his children— Himself. And burned up, burned several of them (unintelligible). That Kelly kid got burned pretty bad. (Unintelligible) Well, isn’t Kelly still in Vegas? I think so. That was one of them, you know, when the population was small, that was a pretty good jolt. Was there any floods, or?—I know we have them now. Well, really, we didn’t have them back then, ‘cause we had the people that stayed clear of these natural runoffs then. There was no reason to build—what caused these people to fill and build on the natural runoffs was price and demand, why they put these places in such a bad location. But I can’t remember any bad floods then. I know in either ’36 or ’37, we had a pretty cold winter here UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 16 and lost a couple of people by Gold Range, which is up where the Atomic Energy is now, the (unintelligible) up there, a couple of them tried to walk out and they froze to death. Do you remember that fire that destroyed the El Rancho? Yes. And then after that, they just never tried to build it again? No, they sure didn’t. There was, I think, more than that fire that met the eye, but it never was proven one way or the other. What kind of politics or political things did they have back then? Did they have commissioners and—? Well, we started out with a mayor, city council, then went to commissioners. But most of your politicians wound up in pretty good financial shape if they used their head and didn’t wind up in divorce court. But we’ve had some pretty good representatives for as small a population as the state of Nevada’s been through all these years. Key Pittman and old McCarran—these people were no slouches coming from the smallest populated state in the Union at the time—on a lot of damn committees, and they done a lot of good for this state. We’ve had some good politicians from out here—Alan Bible, a fine politician in this state—Cannon, pretty good representation. Okay, and you say you came from California, you were born in California? Mm-hmm. See, my mother came here in 1912, and my half-brother and half-sister were born in Vegas. My mother was married at the time to a guy by the name of Robertson, and she divorced him, went to California and met my father, married him, and that’s where Art and I were born, California, and then when he died, which was in ’31, she came back here ‘cause she still had property here, and she never remarried. So, she’s seen a lot here; I think the town was founded around 1905, 1906, railroad town. Then, this railroad going through here was the LASL, they UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 17 called it the LASL Short Line, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Short Line, then the Union Pacific bought it. But that was mostly what happened here was, this was (unintelligible) all the shops here, and then I think in the strike of ’17 when they had the big strike here, they moved the shops to Caliente to bust the strike to move the shops out to Caliente, but the shops were still here, the turntables and the roundhouse and all that was still here when I was a kid, and it didn’t disappear till the diesel came in and replaced the steam engine. So, this was just mostly a train stop back then? Yeah, that’s what it started out as. Then a lot of people came down to Vegas from Goldfield. When the boom was over up there, they moved down here. In fact, I think the Masonic Lodge 32 was the original charter with Goldfield, and I believe Mrs. Ronzoni came down; she had a store in Goldfield, and that went (unintelligible) she moved down here. (Unintelligible) booming town? Oh, the gold boom was over up in Goldfield. The gold— The mines petered up and people (unintelligible). At one time, twenty-three blocks of Goldfield burned up—(unintelligible). I think they found—I don’t know when they founded at Goldfield, but Tonopah, I think, was founded in 1906, somewhere in there. Butler made the strike up there. Do you remember any of the Indians or anything living around here? Well, there were a few, I went to school with a few. Some had a little reservation, (unintelligible) still got it right there on Main Street, between Main Street and the railroad tracks down about, just as you go down the hill to North Vegas, about three-and-a-half, four-acre reservation in there. It wasn’t too bad. Was there an airport? UNLV University Libraries Hal Curtis 18 Yes. That’s not where McCarran’s located right now? No, no. The airport was over there about where the—an air strip right back about where the Desert Inn is, in there. Most of the visitors, did they come by the train or by car, or? By train and car, mostly train. Train was the big thing. And the private club cars on their private car—a lot of individuals in this country owned a private railroad car. And they’d come in, in trains. Was there a lot of social clubs, type things here? Then, oh, you’d have your fraternal organizations. How about religion? Well, there’s always been a Catholic element and a Mormon element here. The Mormons were some of the first in here, and then, of course, with the advent of the railroad, why, a lot of people came in were Italian heritage and Mexican heritage, who worked on the railroad and stayed working on the railroad, which most of them were predominantly Catholic. So you had your Catholic Church and your Mormon Church here. They never discovered gold or anything around here, did they? You had gold down at—well, they worked the mines at Eldorado Canyon and Searchlight; that was gold in that area. Goodsprings over there, there’s where Pop Sim