Floyd Jenne interview, April 4, 1976: transcript

UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne i An Interview with Floyd Jenne An Oral History Conducted by Gordon Brusso 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 Floyd Jenne ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2019 UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 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 Floyd Jenne iv Abstract On April 4, 1976, collector Gordon Brusso interviewed former police officer Floyd Jenne (born June 6th, 1915 in Ogden, Utah) in Boulder City, Nevada. In this interview, Mr. Jenne discusses living and working in McGill, Nevada in the 1920’s and 1930’s. He offers insight into the school system in McGill, as well. He also speaks about working in Boulder City, Nevada as a police officer with the Bureau of Reclamation. UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 5 This is Gordon Brusso on April 4th, 1976, speaking with Mr. Floyd Jenne. Mr. Jenne came from Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah to McGill, Nevada in 1920 and will relate some of the early experiences of that area. To get to McGill, we took a train out of Ogden, Utah. The train ran all night so we were in a (Unintelligible). My first view of the town of McGill was from the far side, or the west side, of Steptoe Valley. The first thing I saw was what appeared to be a large grove of trees setting up on the side hill. This was in the early morning. When we got into town, I found what I had thought was a grove of trees was part of the town of McGill referred to as Town Site. The rows of the houses had all been painted green. I don’t have too much recollection of our immediate arrival in McGill. The school system in McGill consisted of the elementary school—kindergarten through eight—all housed in one building. The teachers were all single women or men. The men did not have to be single. But there was a regulation that as soon as a teacher got married, she had to quit teaching. Therefore, they provided a dormitory for the teachers to live in. It was adjacent to the school grounds. The schools seemingly were average or above because quite a few of the students that came from other areas had problems keeping up with the work level of the grade in which they found themselves in the McGill district. They, in later years, they added a ninth grade to the school system, which was basically a vocational education set up. It started at about the sixth grade for students that had indicated no interest in going on to high school, or that either did not have the ability, or refused to demonstrate it. They still had to take certain required classes but the balance of their time could be spent in vocational education, and the ninth grade was a continuation of whatever they had taken up. It might be carpentry work, metal work, elementary electrical work, or concrete finishing, something of that type. The company, or as UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 6 Nevada Consolidated Copper Corporation, which is a Guggenheim property, had indicated that they would accept certificates showing the number of hours of craft work or training completed towards a (Unintelligible) if the student were to work for them later. The high school was located in Ely, Nevada about twelve miles distance from McGill. We got from McGill to Ely on a school train, which was provided by the school district at no cost to the students. However there was one little clause that if we fouled up in school or on the train, we could be required to furnish our own transportation. The high school in Ely also served the city of Ely and the towns of Ruth and Kimberly. The mines from Nevada Consolidated Copper Corporation were located in Ruth. Kimberly was another copper company. Sometime during the Depression years, Kennecott Copper took over the Nevada Consolidated Copper Corporation and the operation became known as Nevada Mines Division, Kennecott Copper. When we first came to McGill, there were approximately 70,000 people in the entire state of Nevada. It was a common saying that there was one square mile for every square person in the state. In those days we got almost personalized service from our congressman and representatives due to the sparsity of population. The town of McGill was laid out into sections, there was Town Site which was built in the foothills, Middle Town which was more somewhat below, and Lower Town, which was still father down. The early days of the operation in McGill, which was the mines and smelter, all of the work was done by—that was the hauling and so forth—was done by horses. Later on, of course, with the automobiles and trucks. The first truck that I remember them having was a Mac Bulldog with hard rubber tires. To us it was a big truck, but thinking back over it, it probably was about a ton and a half, maybe a two ton truck. UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 7 The churches in McGill consisted of a LDS Church, a community church, which was basically Methodist-Episcopal, a Catholic Church, and a Greek Orthodox Church. If there were any other church groups there, they met in other buildings then, their own church building. In addition to Town Site, Middle Town, and Lower Town, we also had a section of town known as Greek Town and Austrian Town. This started because of the early days of setting up the plant, and before immigration laws were set, a good share of the original common labor used at the smelter and the mines were brought from the Balkan areas of Europe by labor contractors. This was about 1906, so before my time, but I have talked to people who were there at the time. The contractor was given a contract to furnish so many laborers and so much per head. He in turn would go to Europe, recruit the laborers, pay their transportation to McGill, and in return, these people signed for a payroll deduction to reimburse him for the transportation costs. Due to the fact that these people were unable to speak English, separate foremen were set up for each one of these groups. And at one time, when I first started working, they were lower paid than the Northern European people for the same job. But, it wasn’t too long until the smelter was organized as labor was organized, probably in the early thirties. I don’t remember exactly. And one of the steps that the union took, which happened to be the mine, mill, and smelter workers, CIO, was that they abolished these (Unintelligible) games and everybody got same rate of pay for the same job. Today, I was up in Ely a few months back, and there’s no evidence of any segregation at all. But we’re talking probably the third generation. There was not segregation within the town or within the schools, and I think this segregation by living was basically requested by the people themselves. They were allowed to live pretty much the way they had in the old country without interference. UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 8 Were they pretty well accepted by—? Yes. They’re— The other people or were there dividing lines (Unintelligible)? There is, well, in the early days there was some dividing lines. Primarily because the—as these men were brought over, earned money, they sent for their families to come. And the women in the families, a lot of them in the old generation, never did learn to speak English. Therefore, there was no common meeting ground. And, but the men working up on the plant, worked side by side. There was no real segregation from that type. There was some social segregation because of race, but also because of economic conditions. Were there many disputes with management when the workers first started to organize? Nothing overly serious. There were—well, before we came to McGill, they had had two strikes in the late 1917s,’18s, along in there. The first one, they brought in strikebreakers and gunmen. They did have problems. The second strike, the local management had convinced the New York office that the men had a, somewhat of a legitimate beef, so there was no attempt to break the strike. When it was finally settled, they had minor differences through the years. But I left McGill in 1938, was in and out of there after that, but from the time that the strike in 1919 I believe was settled, until 1938, they never had another strike. Was a couple threatened but it was settled without problem. In those days, you had a six day work week? Those days we had a seven day work week. Seven day work week. And how long was the work day? It was an eight hour day. However, during the so called big depression, in order to spread work around, the federal government instituted what they called the NRA, or the National Recovery UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 9 Act. There was a clause in it that specified that no one could work over sixty five days out of ninety. Now that did not necessarily mean that you got sixty five days of work. At the smelter, during the depression years, we got down as low as probably thirty five to forty days out of ninety and eventually worked up to sixty five. Then, when the National Recovery Act was repealed, we went on a seven day a week, eight hour a day operation. There was no compensation, extra compensation from the extra hours. We just got the straight pay. How did this affect the attitude of the people? Was there a lot of dissention or dissatisfaction from not being able to work a regular schedule and having to be out of work part of the time—working part of the time? Or did most people accept it pretty well and continue for all practical purposes a normal life? Well, most people accepted it and figured that we were lucky to get that much time because there was approximately a third of the workforce in the United States was unemployed this period. So we figured, well, we’re fortunate to be able to work even the forty five days out of the ninety. However, by working forty five days straight or the sixty five whatever, and then taking the off time all in a lump, it did give us a chance to get out, get into an area where they raised fruit and so forth, and put up winter’s fruit where occasionally we could pick up part time work. My dad, my brother in law, and I took a lease on a lead mine and we worked a lead mine during our days off. One thing that I failed to mention about the early days in McGill, the smelting system consisted of among other things, a roaster, which they heated the concentrates to fairly high temperature and drove the Sulphur out or burned it out. It came off the roasters through a smokestack as, well, we referred to it as Sulphur smoke. It was high in Sulphur Dioxide and as a result, there were very few trees in McGill. It was hard to make them grow. Grass did a little bit, UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 10 but that too was difficult because normally the smoke did not hover over the town. But if air conditions were right, they settled over the town anything that was wet. The smoke combined with it and formed Sulfurous Acid, which tended to discourage growth. How did this affect the health of the people? Apparently there wasn’t any big problem. Did you have much tuberculosis? Not that was called any particular attention. Respiratory or breathing ailments? Allergies? No. I don’t think it was that serious. There were any number of people that lived to a fairly old age. In fact, my father moved there in 1920. He is still alive. He’ll be ninety-three this summer. He’s not in McGill now. He left there in the mid-fifties. I don’t remember the exact date. He’s now living in Salt Lake City. But there were any number of people that I knew of that lived up in to the seventies that had been there twenty-five, thirty years. What time people did have for recreation? Did you have a local community center that people used? Or did everyone keep pretty much to just their own home activities? Well now, recreation wise, they had what they called the Community League, which originally had been started in pre-prohibition days. The man that ran the pool hall put up part of (Unintelligible) pool hall and saloon, put up part of the money, the company put up some, and the townspeople put up some, and they built what we called The Clubhouse. It housed a swimming pool, tennis courts, a library. And then later on, this Community League became where, every employee that went to work for the company, it was voluntary, but everyone signed up for twenty-five cents a payday deduction, which went into paying for baseball teams, basketball teams, outings for the young people who would go up the, what we call up the crags, UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 11 or in the canyons. Some of the outings were just for a day. Some of them were for three days and two nights. And all expenses were paid out of Community League funds. Any group that was interested could form, say, a basketball team and if they would be assigned into the league and they’d get at least part of their equipment from Community League funds. The bookkeeping process was donated by the company and we held annual meetings to elect officers to oversee the whole works. They also set up a party at Christmas time. And on Halloween they had a big doings to attract the young people to the ball park where we’d have greased pigs, (Unintelligible), sack races, donuts, soft drinks, coffee, etcetera. The party would run until ten, eleven o’clock at night till it just finally died of its own volition of people at home. Light and heat was furnished by huge bonfires. The company hauled all of their scrap wood, ties, tires, etcetera, and built probably six or eight large bonfires along the, around the perimeter of the baseball field. Of course, there were other things that we did, such as hiking, playing, (Unintelligible), various things of that type. We found plenty to do, admittedly. We could play in the streets because there were very few cars in the earlier days. Did you have much fluctuation with new people coming in to the area or was it pretty stable? No, the population was quite stable there. Most of the people were pretty well content with what was going on and to make their homes there. The biggest problem as far as making a home is the fact that the entire town belonged to the copper company. So that when you no longer worked, you could not live in the houses. Now there was some exception to this. Some of the business people owned their own homes, but they leased the ground. They also owned their stores where it was located. There weren’t too many stores there. In addition to the private operated stores, UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 12 there was one we called The Commissary, which was a company store. Contrary to most operations, The Commissary was normally cheaper than the other stores, primarily because there was no credit. In order to trade at The Commissary, you had to use what they called Commissary Tickets. To get them, you went to the employment office and signed for payroll deduction for the book that you got. It may have been a five dollar book, ten dollar, or a twenty five dollar book. They did not sell very many twenty five dollar books. Most people would get by a pay period with ten to fifteen dollars. That was more than adequate to buy most of the food that you could get from The Commissary. They, however, did not handle any produce. The produce, what there was, you got from the privately operated stores. In the early days, the produce consisted basically of cabbage, potatoes, carrots. Things that could be shipped without refrigeration. Did this come from local farmers in the area? There was— Or did it have to be imported? Practically all of it was imported. There were a few small agricultural enterprises around the area. But what they brought in to town, they pedaled out themselves from their truck, driving around town. There was one ranch in, well it was the remnants of the Adams McGill operation. Right now I don’t recall the name of the ranch. It was just out of Ely. Before the copper company came in, a good share of northeastern Nevada was under Adams McGill or Miller Lux cattle companies. They had settled a good share of the land, taken it up under Swamp Act and various other acts that allowed them to get control of federal land. Now you had spoken earlier of when you used to travel on what it was to Salt Lake City by automobile. UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 13 Well, yes. There was two ways to get in to Salt Lake. One was Nevada Northern Railroad, which left in the morning, travelled to (Unintelligible), where it made connections with either the SP or UP Railroads. And you could go either east or west from there depending on your choice. If you went by train, it was an all-day run in to Ogden. Then the train went from Ogden, back to Salt Lake. If you went by auto, the road was up over Schellbourne Pass. It was all dirt road and depending on how lucky you were, you might make it with just one, two long days and one night dry camp, or if you had problems, you might spend two nights on the road getting in to the Salt Lake, Ogden area. Most people, if they could, well most people did travel by train because there weren’t very many cars. The cars weren’t as dependable. Your tires were, the cord tire was just coming in. Prior to that, they had fabric tires, which could not take much of a bump. If you got three or four thousand miles out of a tire, you, figure you were doing pretty good. These were unsealed roads too, were they not? Were they grated? Oh yes. They were just grated semi occasionally. Full of chuck holes, high centers. The high center of course being caused by vehicles going down the middle of the road and wearing the path down where the wheels hit. Were they pretty well washed out or unusable during the winter months then, when there was rain and snow? Probably were, because, I don’t recall too much of the roads that way, but the earlier roads I’m sure there was no set up to plow them and keep them clear during the winter time. By 1930 or thereabouts, probably a little earlier, they had paved the road and it went in. Well, originally it was a gravel road out through Wendover and in to Salt Lake. When they got that in, why, it was just a one day run in to the Salt Lake area. In fact, they started running buses from Salt Lake to McGill. They would, one bus would leave Salt Lake and come to McGill and Ely. The other one UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 14 would leave McGill and Ely and go in to Salt Lake. They changed drivers in Wendover so that the driver, one driver lived in Ely, and the other at Salt Lake area. Did they use concrete or asphalt? Well the roads out there were all black top or asphalt. In the Salt Lake area, a good share of them were concrete. I imagine field stations were pretty few and far between too. Yes. It was about 110 miles as I recall it from McGill to Wendover and there was no place to gas up in between. You’d have to carry extra gas with you? Well— Or would your automobile tank hold enough? Your tank would take it but it was common practice that you would buy a set of cans. They held about a gallon and a half each. One can held water, one gasoline, and one oil. And they had a racket that clamped on to the running board that you would carry these cans in. You also probably would get a expanding tie bracket or carrier that would take up the rest of the running board to carry your luggage in. That precluded you getting in and out on that side of the car because things would come above the door level. But cars in those days did not have trunks, so you had to stack your luggage anywhere you could. Were most of your town buildings what, one story levels? Did you have any multiple story, two or three story buildings? There was only, right now, I can only remember two that were more than one story. The pool hall was a two story building. The upstairs being a recreation type or a big hall where they held UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 15 dances, various town meetings, and so forth. The other was the so called Clubhouse that had three stories. The three stories and a basement. (Tape one ends) The upper floors of the Clubhouse were rooms that were rented out to employees and that helped defray the cost of the operation of our house. I left the Ely district in 1938, went north to Elko county where I spent a year in the 3C camps as a foreman. This was a, 3C’s were set up as a way, thing, to take the boys, give them work, and keep them off the streets. Prior to going to 3C’s, I had taken an examination for Park Ranger. I received offer of a position in Boulder City as what they called Reclamation Ranger when they’d been taken off the Park Ranger list. Reclamation Rangers was the federal police organization in Boulder City and at, as it was called then, Boulder Dam. The force consisted of eight men who worked a scheduled six day a week shift and as needed, more. It was not unusual to work forty-eight to fifty-six hours in a week. There was no allowance made for comp time or extra compensation for these extra hours. We carried deputy sheriff’s commissions for Clark County, Nevada and Mohave County, Arizona and operated basically as deputy sheriffs. This was set up originally, the town was set up as a reservation and we carried U.S. Marshall Commissions and (Unintelligible) our authority in that direction. But one of the Clark County assessors, a man by the name of DeVinney, felt that Clark County should be able to assess the property of Six Companies. They were the contractors that were building the dam. He did so, Six Companies of course fought it and it was carried clear to the Supreme Court, and it was ruled in favor of DeVinney, or Clark County, due to the fact that there were some faults in the original plan setting up the reservation. Because of this, it was ruled that the federal government and the states of Arizona and Nevada respectively, had concurrent jurisdiction in the area. So in order to handle this, we were all sworn in as deputy UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 16 sheriffs for Clark County, Nevada and Mohave County, Arizona. The dam of course, half of it is in Arizona and half in Nevada. If we worked the dam, we took anything that happened in Arizona out through the hills a distance of some fifteen, eighteen miles. We would call the sheriff in Kingman and let him know what was going on. Sometimes he would send a man out, sometimes he didn’t. If not, we just sent a report on in to him to handle it. We also handled things halfway between the dam and town. The man that worked town went halfway to Las Vegas and halfway to Searchlight. The balance of the distance between Vegas or Searchlight was handled by deputy sheriffs. In Vegas, the best of my recollection, they had one state highway patrol for the whole southern Nevada area and the sheriff’s office closed up at night. The telephone operator knew who was on the call, so if anyone needed a highway patrol or deputy sheriff, you called the operator and she called the man who was on duty. Vegas city police of course worked around the clock. In Boulder City, we had one man on duty as I said in town. If anyone needed him, they called the telephone operator. She turned a red light on that was located on top of one of the water tower, the water tank at that time. Trees had not grown up so much so you could see either that light or one that was located on the old Masonic temple, which was in the southeast section of town that is no longer there. But you’d see one of these lights from almost any place in town. Well we’d then go to a phone, call in, see what was up. Didn’t matter what happened, it was yours to handle because there was no way of getting help. The original governmental set up in Boulder City was a city manager that was appointed by the Bureau of Reclamation to run the town. His name was Sims Ely. He was pretty much final authority because no one ever questioned whether he was, had the authority or not, he took it and there was no argument. Mr. Ely left about 1942, I believe, ’41. I don’t remember exactly. He was UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 17 kept on two years beyond the mandatory retirement age in effect at that time, which was seventy, by presidential order. At that time, a good share of the houses in Boulder City, that is, after construction was pretty well finished, was owned either by Bureau of Reclamation or the operating agencies which was the City of Los Angeles Bureau Power & Light or Southern California Edison. The balance of the houses were what originally had been built by Six Companies to house the workers and they had been sold out to people living them or that were interested in buying. What they called the big houses had a bedroom, a bathroom with shower added and a tub, a kitchen, and a screened in porch, combination of dining room and living room, they sold for 250 dollars. The small ones, which the bedroom was on the porch, sold for $125. When I came here in ’39, these houses were selling for about $400 for the larger ones, about $300 for the smaller ones if you could find one to buy. But, housing was very hard to come by. I lived in a government dormitory, which was located on the present location of the Masonic temple for about six weeks before I could find a place to rent to bring my family or my wife down. See, there was a couple of stores in Boulder at the time, that is, grocery stores, was Manix, which was a department store. They sold dry goods as well as groceries. And Central Market which was strictly grocery and produce type store. And out of the auto court, we had what we called a little store, which was operated in connection with Boulder City Auto Court, I believe it was. And they had groceries, tobacco, so forth. The, everything in town, was required to close up at eleven o’clock by orders from Mr. Ely. He did finally back off about café’s to stay open and as time went on, he left, then things were opened up a little bit more. Health facilities, or I should say health inspections, were conducted by a doctor that was hired by the federal government as a city health officer. And the normal procedure was, he would UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 18 see one of the ranger’s out, the ranger who was on duty, when he got ready to make an inspection, and we would do a round. I remember making the rounds one night with the doctor who we got through. He said we woke up and he had closed every café in town for health violations. So we had to go back and allow all but one to open. The one that was the worst had to stay closed until they cleaned up. And then these café’s took turns closing down until they got back up to health standards. In order to keep there, why they would rotate closing one day a week to clean up. Do you know how Southern California Edison and Los Angeles Power & Light obtained property? Well— Did they get it from the federal government or—? Yes. They just leased from the federal government, but they owned the houses. Part of the situation was that Sierra Nevada Power furnished the power that was needed during construction days. And they had a man by the name of Watts that was their operations man here in the area. Then, Southern Cal Edison and the Bureau of Power & Light, City of Los Angeles had an operating contract with the Bureau of Reclamation whereby they would operate the generators, turbans, etcetera, at the dam for the generational electricity. They paid the federal government for falling water and contract is negotiated semi occasionally. I don’t remember the periods of time that they would pay for it. Your day to day ranger activities had consisted mostly of the smallest general civil control. Any potential disorderliness? Did you have very much in the way of criminal investigations that you had to be involved in? UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 19 Things were pretty quiet in the earlier days here simply because Mr. Ely had been a pretty strict man. If anybody fouled up, he would banish them from the reservation during reservation days. And after it was declared that it was not a reservation he would still have them put off the job for periods of time from a week to as much as a month. And there was no question but what the federal government owned the town so he could order them out of town for that period of time. Or if he thought it was bad enough, on occasions, he had had a man time checked or laid off and ordered out of town. So that, because of these types of penalties and it was sure and sudden, we just didn’t have much trouble. We would go for months and never have anybody in jail. Did you have a jail in—? Yes. There was a jail in the basement of the city office building. Probably wasn’t common knowledge throughout the county that we had it, because on a few occasions, when they would arrest a man in Vegas that they were afraid to keep there because of public sentiment, they would make arrangements to bring him out here. First one that I remember of in this category was a man that had attempted rape of three year old girl. There had been not witnesses to the actual happening, but there were, because of the location of where it happened and the fact that no one except the man involved could have been there, witnesses picked him up out of the lineup and he admitted that he had attempted. The sentiment of the people of Vegas was such that they didn’t dare keep him over there so they called up and made arrangements to bring him out to Boulder City after dark. As a matter of possible interest they sent three officers to transport him out. Not that they were afraid that he would attempt to escape, but they were afraid of the temperament of the people in general and the, even the officers, that if just one man came out, that he might not complete the trip. We had him out here for several days until they set up for trial. UNLV University Libraries Floyd Jenne 20 Well there were such things as that that now if we arrested anybody, we would put them in jail, get them into court the next morning. If they got a jail sentence as part of their penalty, they served their time in the Clark County jail. This part of this whole jurisdiction thing that we could require the county to do that. Like, we didn’t even have to keep him over here over night. It was for our convenience that we did it. Was there much recreational activities in the surrounding areas? Did you have to be involved much in search and rescue operations for people? Campers or hikers who’d become lost? Well, there was some of it in the earlier years. The Park Service was involved some, but they were pretty shorthanded, so we got involved in some of that. It wasn’t common, but it, it was just one of these things that we would run into. Were you involved in any of the security activities of the dam or was that all handled by the Bureau of Reclamation or the army? Well, we were under the Bureau of Reclamation. Now during war years, the Bureau of Reclamation, or specifically, the Ranger Force, was charged with plant protection at the dam, that is, the interior protection. The army agreed that they would furnish perimeter guard duty but they reserved the right to pull their troops out on no notice, so that we had to maintain a large enough force for the interior to cover it. This can be found in congressional records during the period, probably, 19—late ’39, ’40, along in there someplace. Whereby the army retained this right that they could move their people out. We convoyed all cars across the dam after December 7, 1941. There would be a military car in front, one behind, and probably