Transcript of interview with Bruce M. Eaton by Jay Brewer, April 24, 1975

UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton i An Interview with Bruce Eaton An Oral History Conducted by Jay Brewer 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 Bruce Eaton ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 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 Bruce Eaton iv Abstract On April 24, 1975, Jay Brewer interviewed Bruce M. Eaton (born 1904 in Toronto, Kansas) about his life in Nevada and more specifically on the growth of Boulder City. Eaton first talks about his family’s move to Nevada and his work as a laborer for Six Companies during the construction of the Boulder Dam and his eventual employment with the Bureau of Reclamation as a general foreman. He also talks about the work conditions on the Boulder Dam, including the protection by Army personnel during the time of World War II. Eaton also describes the details of a federal investigation involving Eaton, a case of suspected espionage, and some of the racial conflicts that existed at the dam. Eaton then discusses his enlistment into the United States Navy and the incident that led him to be medically discharged before a deployment. He then describes the role of several Nevada legislators in helping the growth of Boulder City and his interactions with them. Eaton then discusses his role as city manager and talks about some of the congressional meetings he attended at which he represented the residents of Boulder City on matters relating to the city’s incorporation. The latter part of the interview involves discussion on Eaton’s first residences in Boulder City, including those built for Six Companies employees, and he also discusses the development of Las Vegas and some of the early clubs and saloons that hosted gambling and sold liquor. UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 1 The informant is Bruce Eaton. The date is April 24th, 1975. The time is one p.m. The place is 550 Avenue G., Boulder City, Nevada. The collector is Jay Brewer, and my address is 5213 Holmby, Las Vegas, Nevada. Project is the Local History Project 299: An Oral Interview. Mr. Eaton, what was the year that you came to Nevada, and what were the reasons leading to your coming here? We came to Nevada—I came in June 1932. Mrs. Easton came July the 4th, 1932. The reason for coming here was the same reason that many thousands came here, and that was the Depression of the late twenties and the early thirties. Prior to coming here, I had been employed continuously from the time I started to work, which was at the age of fifteen-plus, and I was never out of work when I wanted to work up until December the 20th, 1931. So, I was much more fortunate than most people at that time by reason of having continuous employment. I was terminated on December 20th, 1931 and, at that time, we were on a job, pipeline construction job, in Minnesota. My home was originally Kansas, and Mrs. Eaton’s family is from Kansas. So, we moved back to where her parents lived in the small town of Clearwater right outside of Wichita. And between then and June when I came out here, I had two or three small jobs and it looked as though the employment situation would be rather bleak for some time to come. We came here with the intention of providing for the family until the Depression was over and the construction activities had started up again. We had no intention of making this our permanent home. We lived in Las Vegas initially in a small one-room cottage, and I commuted to work for Six Companies, Incorporated, who were the prime contractors on Boulder Dam. I was first employed as a laborer, and at that time, the prevailing rate for labor was fifty cents an hour. We worked eight hours a day, seven days a week. We had two days a year off: Fourth of July and Christmas. Every other day was a workday. I worked for Six Companies, UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 2 started out as a laborer; then when they started to pour concrete in the dam proper, I was assigned a job of operating and maintaining a cooling system which cooled the mass concrete in the dam. As you well know, when concrete sets up, there’s a chemical reaction that takes place that generates a tremendous amount of heat, and pouring concrete in the masses that it was poured in, it was necessary to dissipate this heat. And they further staffed in the construction in order to make a watertight structure, and my job throughout the cooling of the dam was to, not to install a cooling pipe in the concrete itself, but to connect and operate the cooling system that provided the cooling. To give you a little bit of an idea of about what was involved, each five-foot, vertically and horizontally, there was a one-inch diameter cooling pipe embedded in the concrete. The dam, for all practical purposes, was poured in two sections with a ten-foot opening left in the center. In other words, one-half of the dam would be roughly in Nevada, the other half in Arizona with a ten-foot section in the center to facilitate this cooling process. And you can imagine the many, many miles of tubing that it would take to run a one-inch diameter tubing from the center each way to the canyon wall and back, and what it amounted to was a huge radiator. And the engineering section of the Bureau of Reclamation, prior to this time, had calculated the temperature of each section, each of these five-foot sections. They had calculated the temperature as to what it would be in the future when everything was normalized, considering the temperature of the water on the upstream side, the sun and its effect on the downstream side. And the idea was to cool the concrete below that calculated temperature, and while that concrete was in a contracted form, a liquid grout, a liquid cement, was pumped in between the void between each pore and made a solid block of it. And then, as the temperature warmed up, the concrete would always be in compression instead of tension. UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 3 Concrete is much stronger under compression than it is tension. And by reason of these facts, it had been established that the arch of the dam has actually moved upstream very slightly from its original position due to the lengthening of the arch. I continued on until the completion of that job with Six Companies. That particular part of the construction of the dam was so unique, and there was so little information available on the techniques of cooling concrete, but the company was unable to submit a firm bid on that portion of the construction. Well, they negotiated a contract with the Bureau of Reclamation on what is commonly referred to as force account, or cuff plus—it was a fixed percentage over the actual cost. And for that reason, and me being in charge of that portion of the work, I was designated as the only one authorized to receive material and approve vouchers for payment in Six Companies. Later on in the period of construction, that caused a slight problem that I want to relate, and there’ll be another incident, too, along in the story that I’ll bring out that will kind of weave a common pattern to this whole story. I was approached by somebody, office personnel, one day to sign a voucher for some material, and I replied, “We didn’t receive this material.” Well, he said, “That’s okay, go ahead and sign it, doesn’t make any difference.” And I knew, had a good idea what would follow if I had signed that. I had no intention of signing that or any other voucher for any material that we did not receive. My reply to the individual was that I will sign it under one condition. And he said, “What’s that?” And I said, “That I get fifty percent of everything I steal.” He said, “Do you think I’m crazy?” Well, I said, “What the hell do you think I am?” I said, “You’re not paying me enough money to steal for this outfit, and if I have to steal, you better get somebody else to do it.” Well, that didn’t contribute to a very good relationship between me and my department, and a short time after that, why, I was fired, as the director saw to that course. UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 4 Well, the engineers in charge of the Bureau of Reclamation became concerned about why I was fired, and they paid a visit up to me at my home, and I explained the situation. He said, “We’re paying your salary, you’re satisfying us, you come back to work.” I said, “I can’t come back to work. I’ve been removed from the job.” Well, he said, “That’ll be taken care of.” The next day, a representative of Six Companies came by and told me to come back to work, which I did do, and finished the job. I was not asked to sign anymore vouchers for materials we didn’t receive, and we got along pretty well after that. Shortly after the finishing of the cooling system and I was terminated—that would have been in October 1935—I was out of work approximately a month when I went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation. At that time, all of the employees, the people who went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation were hired through the State of Nevada Employment Office, which was located in Las Vegas. So, I was cleared through the employment office in Las Vegas and went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation in November 1935 as a laborer, and subsequently was promoted to pipefitter and pipe foreman, and eventually to the position of general foreman in November 1940. It was very obvious to some at that time that we were approaching what ultimately resulted in World War II, and the Secretary of Interior and I presume the operating agencies and the Bureau of Reclamation deemed necessary to have a representative at the dam that had overall supervision, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And that’s when this position of general foreman was established. The man that was initially signed in this position was transferred immediately after that, and I assumed the responsibilities of the position. And we had a general foreman on each shift. In absence of the director of power or his assistance, the general foreman’s word was the final word on any controversy that might develop between the UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 5 construction forces—at that time, it was construction forces involved with the erection of the generating equipment. There was the two operating agencies: the City of Los Angeles and the Southern California Edison Company who were operating agents for the Bureau of Reclamation. Well, in any controversy or any abnormal condition, the operation foreman on the job at that time was supposed to settle all the differences. Sometime prior to this period, the Bureau of Reclamation, or possibly the Department of Interior, and the War Department, as it was known then, negotiated an agreement relating to the protection of Boulder Dam in case of a national emergency. And in this agreement, it was very specific on the areas that the Bureau of Reclamation would be charged with the responsibility of protecting against sabotage, espionage, or any other subversive activity, and the Army was charged with protecting specific designated areas. That proved to be a very valuable agreement more times than one, as I’ll point out later. Sometime in this same time period, there was construction in Boulder City, in an area now that lies below New Mexico (unintelligible), and it would have been founded by Avenue B on the west, and I believe K on the east. They built what was at the time construction Camp Sibert, which was later changed to Camp Williston. And the camp was large enough to hold two Army battalions. One battalion would be primarily a housekeeping unit and would be permanently stationed here. The other would be a battalion of infantrymen to man the designated post to protect the different areas around the dam. And I’m not quite sure in the exact order in which all these different activities were set up, but the director of power of the Bureau of Reclamation chief officer here was known at that time—that was prior to the establishment of region within the Bureau of Reclamation. This was the Boulder Canyon Project, and they UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 6 reported directly to Denver and to Denver to Washington. Boulder City and Boulder Dam was to and did play a very, very important part in the expediting World War II. It has always been my belief that because the project, the actual construction of the dam, and the initial generating power was so much ahead of schedule that Boulder Dam was capable and did produce a tremendous amount of electrical energy that went into the Southern California area. And as a result of the electrical energy, they were able to develop what turned out to be the huge aircraft industry that’s in the southern part of California at this time. Also, because of the amount of energy available here, the plant in Henderson was constructed to refine magnesium, which was to replace or use as a substitute for aluminum, construction of aircraft and so forth during World War II. The plant at Henderson and Boulder Dam had extremely high priority on material, men, and everything else—an extremely important project. On the day of Pearl Harbor, the director of power called his staff together, and I was among those called. It had to have been before Pearl Harbor, or I wouldn’t have been at the staff meeting. I was named what was unofficially called the coordinator of protection, and that, in addition to my duties at the dam itself, trying to coordinate all of the activities in the county that related to protection, whether it was Boulder Dam or the entire county. And that involved the Army personnel at Camp Williston, it involved the Army personnel at Nellis Air Base—and it wasn’t called Nellis at that time. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was the Army Air Corps; the Air Force had not been established yet. The Air Corps was under the Army; in fact, each branch of the military had their own air force—the Navy had theirs, the Marines had theirs. Then there was the sheriff’s department and the local police, and any number of other organizations that were interested in protection. UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 7 As I say, this staff meeting was called immediately after Pearl Harbor. We went over the different possibilities and came up with some specific orders, and the first one to be put into effect was to close the highway across the dam to all vehicles, and that any vehicle that crossed the dam from that time on would cross under escort. The original escort was provided by Bureau of Reclamation personnel; later, it was taken over by the Army personnel. It was also decided that no one would be permitted within a designated area without a pass, and there was only two people on the project that could approve the pass to get into through the proceeding area: the director of power, and myself. There had to be checkpoints set up, and immediately after this, construction was started, or could have been prior—it all happened rapidly—I’m not sure exactly when. But heavy steel gates were placed across the highway—one on the east entrance to the dam, one on the west entrance to the dam. These were manned twenty-four hours a day, and that’s where the escort took over. No one was permitted beyond this point without positive identification. If anyone from the Denver or Washington office would come out here, regardless of their position, they were required to secure a proper identification before they were admitted to the area. That caused some hard feelings, naturally, as did the convoy, but to my knowledge, there was no incident, no one was prevented from crossing the dam in a vehicle as long as they submitted to being convoyed across. They were not even asked for identification. There might have been some deviations from that; if we got word from the law enforcement that they were looking for a specific person for some specific violation that we could identify, we might check and see if we could apprehend that person. But other than that, they were escorted across without any questions asked. Also, at that time, the local police, the Boulder City Police, and the guards of the dam were without authority. They actually had no more authority than any other civilian; UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 8 that was not commonly known. However, some of the guards and some of the policemen were deputized by the county sheriff and deputy sheriff and, by that reason, they did have authority to make arrests. There were quite a number of weaknesses—that, one, if it was a weakness, it’s been changed. They had all the authority to make arrests any other police officer does now. Involved with this coordination of protection, I was working with the state Council of Defense of Nevada, and that was under the direction of Hugh Shamberger, who did a wonderful job, excellent job, be commended for the work that he did during the war. There was also the Clark County Civilian Defense Council. It was just that; we tried to organize civilians to support the (unintelligible) in case of emergency—and a training program. And somewhere near this time, of the service organizations, and with all these different organizations, there were just about as much, overall organization as there would be in a herd of wild horses. It seemed to several that each one was going in a different direction trying to get to the same place. And the result of all the confusion, one of the service organizations got the idea, and probably justly so, that too many of their recommendations were being ignored, or at least not carried out. And they saw fit to request an FBI investigation that involved two people in Boulder City, and I was one of them. The committee making the investigation consisted of one FBI agent and one other person out of the Secretary of Interior’s Office. Unbeknown to them, I and the other party being investigated knew when they would arrive here and what their business was. Housing was very, very short at that time, and the Bureau of Reclamation has always maintained a service up here that they provide or negotiate housing for people coming in on business. And I don’t know why it was—we had an extra room at that time, and the morning on the day that these two people UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 9 arrived, I received a telephone call from the Reclamation office telling me that there was some people coming out of the Washington office. And there was a lady involved and they could not find a place for her to live, and they’d be here probably a week, probably two weeks, and wanted to know if we could possibly put her up in our home. Mrs. Eaton wasn’t here at the time, but I assured the caller that I was reasonably sure that we could and that I would call back if we couldn’t. So, when Mrs. Eaton came home, I told her what the story was, and I couldn’t believe it myself that it happened that way. The lady involved happened to be the, I suppose what you could call now the administrative assistant, and Harold Ickes, who was the Secretary of Interior at that time. So, she took a room at our house with the understanding that she would go out for her meal. Well, the FBI agent had a room elsewhere, so it was very convenient for him to come down here to meet her to take her out to dinner. And sometimes, we would enter into a conversation and maybe it’d be an hour, hour and a half, or two hours before they’d get away to go to dinner—just a nice, friendly overall conversation about everything. And you would think it was small talk. But anyway, this went on for a week or ten days. One of her main concerns in the Washington office was that she was in charge of the defense bond sales program, and it was not going over. And we got into that, and we spent quite a bit of time, and she solicited help, anything that we’d do to help put the program over. And I suggested that if she was in earnest about the program that they initiate and put into effect provisions for payroll deduction of sale of defense bonds, which she thought was a very good idea. Immediately upon returning to Washington, that was the first thing that she did was to see if they took the necessary steps to provide for the sale of defense bonds and to be paid for through payroll deductions, and the sales went up immediately. UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 10 Well, I don’t know exactly how long they stayed here, but they finished their business. As far as I know, the report must not have adversely affected me because I’m still here, and I heard nothing more from the investigation. In addition to the Clark County Civilian Defense Council, I was also on the Office of Price Administration, the Clark County War Price and Rationing Board, and we had several incidences in all of these different assignments. The most interesting thing was, at the first meeting of the Rationing Board, the first tire that was approved for rationing went to a Japanese American truck gardener living in this area. It doesn’t make sense, but he was the first to qualify for the new tire under the system that was in effect at that time. We were also rationing gas and sugar. There was one incident that we had very good reason to believe could have resulted into either sabotage or espionage. There was a man hired out as a journeyman electrician. He went to work at the dam, and it was quite apparent that he was capable of performing duties way beyond what was required of a journeyman electrician. In fact, he was probably better versed in electronics, what would develop into electronics, and most of our electrical engineers were here at that time. And that immediately caused concern, and an investigation was started. The man was transferred from a very vulnerable position at the dam, was transferred to a position in Boulder City where if he did have that intent or assignment, could be better dealt with. It was soon learned that he had in his possession some very, very sophisticated radio equipment for both receiving and sending. The investigation hadn’t gone on but just a very, very few days till the man disappeared as mysteriously as he came here. So, I never knew, we never were able to track it beyond that. In my knowledge, there was no other successful attempt at sabotage. Well, due to the very, very important position of Boulder Dam towards the war effort, one battalion of Army personnel was stationed at Camp Williston and maintained the camp. UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 11 Another battalion was brought in on a more or less short time basis. They didn’t want leave those battalions here that were guarding the property too long, for one reason or another. One incident in that respect was when they were building the Basic Magnesium Plant in Henderson. One afternoon, probably around two o’clock, I was contacted by a lieutenant from the Army, and it developed that he was from the Desert Center training area, and it was where General Patton was training his Army who were overseas duty in North Africa. This fella had two or three days’ growth of beard on his face and desert dust from head to foot. And he was looking for a place to bivouac a detail that he did not tell me what was involved, but he told me approximately how many men and approximately what equipment would be involved, and he wanted a place for them overnight. And I thought that they would want water and some of the conveniences, and I showed him a place that I had in mind, and he said, “No, that wasn’t what he wanted.” He picked out a spot about halfway between here and Railroad Pass, about two miles out of town, which was desert and rock, and he said, “This looks like an excellent place.” He said, “I’d like to camp here,” and said, “If this is what you want, okay.” Now, prior to this time, the Bureau of Reclamation had negotiated an agreement with the National Park Service to administer the recreational area around Lake Mead and Boulder Dam. It was necessary for me to report to the park superintendent here that this detachment of soldiers would be bivouacking in this area. And he told me he was sorry, but he could not permit that, that even though they were only going to be there for a short time and move on, they would undoubtedly turn over some of the rock, and it wouldn’t have the same varnish on the top side as it would have—hadn’t been disturbed, and he couldn’t permit that at all. Well, I didn’t think that I should go into any detail with him as to why they were here. In fact, I didn’t know at that time while they were here, so I suggested, “All right, that’s very good. If you will put your objection UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 12 in writing and forward it through channels, we’ll be very happy to honor it when he comes back,” which meant that his recommendation had to go to Washington and to the Park Service in Washington and from the Park Service over to the Department of Interior, from the Department of Interior to the Bureau of Reclamation back here. Well, they moved in that afternoon—no, they didn’t, excuse me. They didn’t move in that afternoon. I assured him he could have the place. I got a telephone call that evening from Major Hennessy—I can always remember the name because he did like Hennessy, Three-Star—and wanted to know if I wanted to take a ride with him the next morning, and I said, “Sure.” You didn’t ask questions. So, he and his driver picked me up about just before daylight, and his soldiers were what we called at that time colored—they would object to that now, but was the common term, and he had a battalion of colored soldiers here that were doing guard duty at the dam. And he had a colored driver. And we started out towards Railroad Pass, and the object to go to Railroad Pass was to meet the head of this column coming in from the Desert Training Center to steer them into their bivouac area here in Boulder City. Now, they could find their way all the way from Desert Center out to Railroad Pass, but it’d be impossible for them to find their way from there on in to Boulder City. In fact, he had might arrangements to meet this column out there to turn in down the road towards Boulder City instead of going on to Henderson. Well, on the way out to meet this column, I found out what it was all about. There was quite a number of colored construction employees at Henderson, and they’d had some racial problems, and they were anticipating real difficulty. And it was time such that this column, we got out to Railroad Pass just in time to— [Audio cuts out, begins again midsentence] UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 13 Aircraft, they had machine guns mounted on a jeep, they had halftracks, they had radio equipment—they had the full requirement. And they went down, and it was time such that they picked the spot—and this is all prearranged, they knew all about it, but I didn’t—they turned this column around where one shift of employees was leaving Basic Magnesium and the dayworkers were coming on. And they interrupted all these people coming to work so that they could see what equipment was parked between them and the colored battalion that was guarding the project here. At the same time, another battalion of Army personnel came in from the east across the dam and relieved the guards at the dam of their responsibility there, and they were, in turn, loaded on a train and shipped out of here, and all done before dark that night. The idea was that they didn’t want racial problems to develop at Henderson with a colored battalion here with all of the weapon. So, that was the way that the maneuver was carried out, and there was probably less than a half a dozen people outside of the Army personnel that knew what happened. It was a very well-executed maneuver. They stayed here a couple days after that and then went on back down and eventually to North Africa with Patton. There again, it proved the wisdom of this protection plan that was negotiated between the two departments back in the thirties. We had another occasion to use it. A captain directly from West Point came out here and was under the major that had the battalion here, and he made a survey of the project, and he informed me where he was going to station guards, which was contrary to the agreement. And I advised the captain that there had been and was, in existence, such an agreement, and he said, “I’m not bound by those agreements; I’m here to protect this property and I’m going to protect it the way I see fit.” And I said, “Very good, you present your plan through the channel, and we’ll be very happy to cooperate with it when we receive an approved copy of it.” Well, that ended that. UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 14 We worked with the district attorney and the sheriff’s department on these different assignments—the Defense Council of Nevada and the Clark County Civilian Defense Council developing black op ordinance and so and so forth regularly. These activities continued on, and I began to get a little bit impatient, I guess. I thought probably things weren’t active enough here; I didn’t have enough to do. I don’t know what was back of it, but I thought that I could be of more service elsewhere. I contacted the Army engineers for a position at Hawaii. I thought that I could probably contribute a little bit more there than I was here. And they accepted my offer, but the administration here thought otherwise, and they refused to approve a transfer for me. And as much as I was to make considerably more money on the other assignment, I didn’t like that very well, and the next thing I did was to check into the possibility of joining the Navy. And I went to Los Angeles and did enlist in the Naval Reserve as a chief petty officer, and was sent back home to await call to active duty. When I came back I told the director of power what I had done, and he was most irritated, and when he did come down, he said, “They can’t do that. We have an agreement with the War Department; they won’t touch any of our men.” Well, I said, “You apparently overlooked the fact that the War Department doesn’t run the Navy; they have their own regulations,” and I said, “you failed to contact them.” Well, we weren’t on speaking terms from then on until I was called to active duty, even though I did continue on with my duties here as assigned until I was furloughed to go on active duty with the Navy in December 1942. After all the training and whatnot, I was sent to the South Pacific with the construction battalions, spent about twenty-two months in the South Pacific where I gained, I thought, some very valuable information, or at least it was very gratifying, the work that we did. The CBs were a wonderful organization at that time, and I understand that they still are. After being in the UNLV University Libraries Bruce Eaton 15 South Pacific this period of time, I was ordered back to the States for reassignment, and I had received orders and did reports for a physical examination on a Saturday to go overseas on Monday. And between the time of the physical examination on Saturday and Monday, why, I had some complications. I was eating lunch in the mess hall, Camp Parks, and I felt a click snap in my right ear and immediately started to get dizzy, and within a very, very short time, I knew that I had to leave the mess hall, so I had no control of my equilibrium. I staggered like a drunken person. I had to hold on to the furniture to get out of the mess hall, and I was taken to sick bay, and from then on until I was released to inactive duty on a disability discharge, disability retirement, I was i