Transcript of interview with Carl Ciliax by Gary Wood, March 8, 1980

UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax i An Interview with Carl Ciliax An Oral History Conducted by Gary Wood 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 Carl Ciliax ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 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 Carl Ciliax iv Abstract On March 8, 1980, Gary Wood interviewed Carl Ciliax (born 1941 in Las Vegas, Nevada) about his experiences living in Nevada. Ciliax first describes his family history, his early interests in wildlife, and his background and education in artwork. Ciliax then discusses his early experiences in hunting and his eventual interest in conservationism and preservation, including his involvement with organizations that sought the protection of desert bighorn sheep and the protection of wildlife in general. The two talk more about wildlife, the early development of Las Vegas, and the effects of the atomic testing. The interview concludes with Ciliax’s recollection of recreational activities and some of his thoughts on conservationism. UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 1 Interview with Carl Ciliax, one tape, number two track, side one, tape speed one and seven-eighths. Informant is Carl Ciliax, the date is March 8th, 1980, eight p.m. The place, 3010 Breton Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada. The collector is Gary Wood, 1600 East Rochelle, Las Vegas, Nevada. The project is Local History Project and Oral Interview: Life of a Las Vegan. Okay, Carl, would you give me your name and your present address? My name is Carl Ciliax. I live at 3010 Breton Drive here in Las Vegas. Okay, and where and when were you born? I was born here in Las Vegas in 1941, November the 7th at Las Vegas Hospital, Dr. Hardy. Where was Las Vegas Hospital? I believe that would be down around Seventh and Stewart, somewhere in that neighborhood—I’m pretty sure that’s where, was Seventh and Stewart. It was the only hospital in Las Vegas at the time. And what are the members of your immediate family? Well, let’s see, that would be my parents. My mother is Betty Ciliax, my father is Gus Ciliax. I have one sister, Barbara White. My sister lives down in Sonoma Beach, and my mother and father are both living and they live here at 1304 Sweeney in Las Vegas. Are you married now? Yes, I am. To who? That would be Dana, was Dana Delong, and we live here at 3010 Breton Drive. Would you tell me a little bit about your familiar history? UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 2 Well, let’s see, my mom originally moved up here with her folks from Bisbee, Arizona. Grandpa was the undersheriff in Cochise County, Arizona, working out of Bisbee, and he came up here to work on the dam. What year was that? Oh, boy, I don’t know. I don’t know what year that— Thirties? Yes, that would have had to have been when the dam was started. Things didn’t work out to well between him and grandma, and they were divorced shortly after they moved up here. Grandma remarried, and she married a gentleman by the name Ira Proud, who was really the only grandfather that I knew on my mother’s side. My grandpa’s quite an interesting person. He came here in 1909; he moved in here to Goodsprings. At the time, he was driving a wagon team from Phoenix, and he originally came out of Mountain Home, Idaho, and I guess they were running some wild horses at the time, and that’s how he wound up in Phoenix. And he’s been here in Goodpsrings his entire life, worked in mines—he’s been in and out of every mine in the Goodsprings area. They used to bring the ore from the Goodsprings mills and mines by wagon; it was a two-day trip from Goodsprings into Las Vegas. It’s only thirty miles from town, but at that time, you know, in the wagons, why, it took two days to get here. I’ve retraced the trip that Grandpa took in the wagons—he mapped it out to me and I rode it horseback here just a few years ago. And it took my all day horseback to go back up the same way that he did. And he’s quite an interesting little gentleman. He’s really—he showed me an awful lot of the sheep country and things that, you know, around the area—the springs in the area and where you can still find the old pepper cans and stuff from when people were poaching sheep during the UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 3 Depression. Everybody said they were eating burrows, but they were all eating sheep. There was a lot of stills set up during Prohibition on the watering holes around the area. Is he the gentleman that really got you interested in the wildlife? I would guess, so, yes. I think probably Grandpa’s stories had a great deal to do with when I was younger. And then, let’s see, I was getting off the subject. On my dad’s side, his parents came from Detroit, Michigan. They moved out after the Depression. Grandpa was just almost wiped out in Detroit, they were originally from Detroit. And right after the Depression, he moved his family to Pasadena, California. My father, Gus, attended the University of Oregon, but he’d kill me if he heard me say that—I don’t know if it was Oregon State or University of Oregon, it makes a lot of difference to him and I have no idea which one it was. And then after he graduated from college, he moved here to Las Vegas and joined his brother Ed Ciliax in opening the Town Barbecue; that was a restaurant at the corner of Fifth and Fremont. And as I understand, it was the first drive-in restaurant in Las Vegas. Right Downtown. Right Downtown, Fifth and Fremont. What’s there right now? I think a parking lot and a gas station. They— Was Fremont Street paved back then? Oh yeah, but it looks a lot different, it even—I can remember it looking a lot different than it looks now. It was lined with little small hardware stores and things of that nature. It was, like Fifth and Fremont, there was four gas stations on every corner; there was a gas station on each corner, and what it was once the front of the barbecue, that’s what we call it, the Barbecue, where the cars came in to the drive-in, they put a Richfield station. George Frye had the UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 4 Richfield station there. And the National Dollar Store, I think, was built, and (unintelligible) came in another corner, and there’s been a variety of things on the fourth corner. But back, that was, I think, back, oh, it would’ve been in the early thirties when Dad was originally in that. That’s where my mom and dad met was at the Barbecue. Dad was the short order cook, and Mom was the waitress. She had lived in Goodpsrings and gone to school at Las Vegas High School, the only high school in town, the same one I went to. And in fact, I had some of the same teachers that Mom had. Really? Same school. And, but anyway, she would come in from Goodsprings during the week to go to high school and then go back out to Goodsprings on the weekends. And she met Dad there at the restaurant, and they were eventually married. And one of the restaurants here in town that I want to go, I haven’t been down to eat at yet, I’ve heard them mentioned several times: the (unintelligible) Jack, and so I want to go down there and try that. I understand it’s still down there by the Showboat and place, and that’s one of the places that they used to hang out years ago. And, let’s see— What about Ed? Whatever happened to Ed? Okay, Ed eventually sold the restaurant out to my dad, and he invested with several other people, and they bought the old Clark Market at Fifteenth and Fremont, and then they renamed it Foodland. So, Uncle Ed eventually bought out most of the original stockholders in that, and then they—let’s see, he sold the market out. Somewhere along in there, Dad sold the restaurant and wound up being the office manager for the Foodland markets—by then there was three of ‘em, and Dad was the office manager for that. And the Uncle Ed suffered a stroke and died—don’t as me when, I can’t put the date on that. And then shortly after that, the Ciliax family, that was his UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 5 son, Bill, took over for him. And they sold the market, and shortly after that, Dad retired. And he’s still retired, just spends most of his time at the Elks Club and gardening. The Elks Club on Las Vegas Boulevard? Yes, mm-hmm. Right next to the old Mormon Fort? Right, right, down where Cashman Field used to be. Give me a little background of your education. Well, let’s see. I went to grammar school at John S. Park, and after grammar school, I went to Las Vegas High School. When I started Las Vegas High School, that was the only high school in town. While I was there, they built Rancho. And after I graduated from high school—in fact, before I even got out of high school—I started working for Silver State Printers as Jean Cradle had the place. And after I got out of high school, I took some art classes out at the university, UNLV. At that time, there was only, I think there was only two buildings out there at that time. Mr. Ross was there, our teacher out there, and I took some night classes from him and had intended to go to Mexico City for artwork major and got sidetracked in the printing business and wound up being with Silver State Printers for seven years. And then after that, I took some time off and did some cowboying for a while here, around locally, did a little bit of sheep guiding, bighorn Sheep, and after I got a little of that out of my system, well, then I finally went back in to the printing business, tried that again, worked at a couple small print shops in town, and finally decided that wasn’t for me, so I got out of that and started over at Turf Equipment Supply, which was quite a small place at the time. And I spent eight years with Turf Equipment, and I left them and went to Desert Nursery, spent a year with Desert Nursery and I left there and went to Kelly Pipe and Supply, and that’s where I am now. UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 6 Let’s move back to when you first started your interest in wildlife. How did this come about? Well, when they—the folks had the restaurant down there on Fremont—right next door to them was Jerry Davis Piano Company. And the proprietor, Jerry Davis, was just really a super guy, and he was in bow hunting, and our Indian artifacts and anything that had anything to do with nature and the outdoors, and his kids were too young to go with him. And he asked my mom one time if they thought I’d like to go on some little excursion they were going on—I think I was ten or eleven at the time—and Mom said sure, she thought I would like to. My dad’s not into hunting and fishing; he used to take us fishing when we were kids, but that was a once-a-year type of thing. And anyway, Jerry drug me along on a couple excursions, and I followed him and one of his hunting buddies, Doug (unintelligible), and I really enjoyed it. Well, next thing you know, they got me a bow, and I started practicing, and next thing you know, I was a regular member of the group even though I was eleven years old. I was the junior partner who fixed the firewood and all the water. And I killed my first deer with a bow and arrow up here on Mt. Charleston right behind (unintelligible) place up there, just off to the left, just as you start digging in the timber. We killed a deer up there, and back in those days, there was a lot of deer up there. I can remember the day that I shot my first deer up there, I saw twenty-seven bucks and one doe—naturally, I killed the doe—couldn’t hit any of the bucks. But that was quite a few deer to see in one morning right there just right off the highway. This was ’52? Yes, it’d been right around ’52. Like I say, there was quite a few deer up there, very little people. It wasn’t as developed as it is now. The old lodge was up there, the one that burned down. But it didn’t get the kind of traffic that it gets up there now. And anyway, Jerry is the one who really UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 7 initially really taught me how to hunt and fish and interest in the outdoors, and we used to go camping and hunting up in Beaver, Utah every year, and that’s where I really got interested in it. So this, in turn, leads you to special skills and interests you developed into the animals? Well, it’s definitely had a great impact on my life because I’ve more or less channeled my ambitions, desires, and sense of values in regards to the wildlife and the outdoors and our local valley and everything—I’ve been involved in the Fraternity of Desert Bighorn; it’s an organization that we formed. We felt that the bighorn sheep was the biggest claim to fame as far as wildlife was concerned that Nevada had, and that there was absolutely no protection, no study—there was no program whatsoever by our fish and game department for the sheep. There was a hunting season on the sheep. I had been actively engaged in that as a guide and as a hunter for years, and from being so close to it, most of us from that aspect could see that the sheep needed an awful lot more information gathered before the authorities could be making the type of decisions about their wellbeing that they were making. So we formed this club of hunters and conservationists or what have you strictly for the preservation and wellbeing of the desert bighorn sheep. I was a charter member of that organization and member of the board of directors for about eight or nine years, and I served as president for a couple of years. But the club is now disbanded, but it was disbanded primarily due to, we achieved what we had set out to do. What was that? We drew attention to the sheep; we got programs started with the fish and game department in conjunction with the Fish and Wildlife Service through donated monies, the Fleischmann foundation, the Boone and Crockett Club, and ourselves—we had a fundraising program. We went to all the public hearings, and we did everything that was in our power, legally, to do to convince the public and the fish and game department that they were neglecting the desert UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 8 bighorn sheep to the point where we finally embarrassed them into a program, through our donated money and the (unintelligible) funds, to start a desert bighorn sheep study program. And we changed the aspect of—concept, I should say—of what constitutes a legal ram, and this is the only state to use anything besides a three-quarter curl. What is a three-quarter curl? Well, when you’re hunting bighorn sheep, whether it be bighorn sheep or any of the other three species of sheep in North America, the general consensus of opinions is it’s a limited resource, and a three-quarter curl would limit the hunt to mature rams and not put an undue strain on the harvest of the sheep. We’ve found out from study and being closely related and involved in it that a young ram just coming into his prime breeding age will qualify for a three-quarter curl. And we finally convinced the fish and game to go to a concept that had never been tried before of actually initiating the hunter on a one-on-one basis and educating him on how to age and score sheep in the field prior to shooting him. And we’ve changed the regulations here to where a legal, ram in Nevada is seven years old or older, or 144 Boone and Crockett Club points, eight or one. Now, for measuring sheep skulls out at the university, they’ve got an extensive bighorn sheep skull collection out here at the university; we’ve gone through that collection, aged the sheep, and taken their score, and come up with the either/or theory, and it’s worked quite successfully now for several years. We did draw attention to the sheep’s plight. They do have an extensive study program now in the fish and game department for the sheep, and politically, there’s just not use in the club still being formed. We did do quite a bit of waterhole work and that type of thing, but that was more for our own enjoyment than, really, necessity. Back when you started this, are you saying you were driven to do this because there wasn’t any protection for the sheep? UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 9 Well, there was protection, but it was based on guess. We had a fish and game department that primarily concentrated on the animals that produced the most revenue and were the most politically popular. What are those? Well, your quail, deer, ducks, fish—the ones that generate all the money, and the ones— For the licenses? Sure, through licenses, right. And the ones who most of the majority of the people get to hunt. They were shorthanded, they didn’t have the money to spend on the sheep program that were needed to be spent, but nonetheless we were still having a sheep hunt. They did conduct a hunt, and they were picking the (unintelligible) out of the air. Mm-hmm. And when you get right down and discuss what they were basing it on, it was all guess. And we felt that they should either discontinue the hunt or that they should have a sheep program, and preferably a sheep program. We feel that it is still Nevada’s top resource and claim to fame as a big game animal. Why? Well, everybody else has got something—if we’ve got deer, there’s other states that have more deer, better deer—we’re not a great deer state. Elk, we’ve got a few of, but not biggie. Everybody in the west seems to have more elk. Chukars—Idaho’s got more Chukars. Desert bighorn sheep—this is the thing that Nevada has that other states don’t have—Arizona, New Mexico, California have gotten them. We’re ranked right up there with anybody for having one dandy resource in the desert bighorn sheep, and you see this, the emblem of the fish and game department is the desert bighorn sheep; the state animal’s a desert bighorn Sheep, but there was UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 10 still no study program. They didn’t know how many sheep they had, they didn’t know whether the herd was increasing or decreasing, they didn’t know why it was, if it was—they didn’t have any idea what the (unintelligible) ratio was, what the health of the herd was—they had no idea. But yet, they were conducting a hunt, and it was a highly publicized animal. But there was no man hours allotted to the study of the animal, and we felt that they deserved better than that. Well, this is—the laws and regulations statute help get developed, or for the whole state. Right, just for the state of Nevada. Did you concentrate on just hearing the southern part of the state? Well, only in the fact that the southern part of the state’s where the animals themselves are located. The main political battle took place throughout the state. This didn’t come easy; you don’t take an agency that’s as firmly entrenched and old fashioned as our fish and game department at that time—you don’t get them to just, you know, come up with a suggestion, and they don’t just change. What year was this? This would’ve been in the early sixties. We had to go to public hearings as far away as Lovelock. This was all done on our own time during the week, take off work. There was a small nucleus of about eight or ten of us that did most of the running around and appearing at the meetings and speaking and all that type of thing. Our membership was over 250 people nationwide at one time, probably at its people, of people that are interested in sheep. And it wasn’t just sheep hunters or preservationists or conservationists; it was a wide cross section of everybody that just rallied around the common cause of the desert bighorn sheep. It’s a rare animal; it borders on being an endangered species. And we felt—myself, at the time, I was quite an avid hunter. [Recording ends] UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 11 Start of side two. Okay, and the hunters? Okay, well, the hunters were the first ones to notice that the sheep had been neglected, that there was an awful lot of misinformation, we felt, from published reports from the fish and game department that didn’t match up with what we felt we saw in the field. Some areas didn’t have the quotas that the fish and game department assumed they did in other areas, but it stood a higher quota as far as the hunting is concerned. But hunting aside, we felt that the sheep should be managed for the welfare of the sheep, and if they were managed for their own welfare that there would be—that hunting would be permissible, but that first and foremost they should be managed for themselves and for their own end. And so, consequently, the club is made up not of just hunters, but it was conservationists, preservationists, and hunters, photographers, naturalists from all over the country. Do you attribute the uniqueness of the desert bighorn sheep to the climate here in Nevada? Oh, yes, definitely. I (unintelligible) my grandfather—like I say, he came here in 1909—and the decline of the sheep in the population here was at one time a lot higher than it is now. And I think that you can attribute the large decline to the environment that they live in being encroached by mankind on the waterholes. Around the turn of the century, I would imagine they probably were about their peak. About that time, that’s when the mining really got going in earnest around here. Most of the water— Here in the south? In southern Nevada, right. The Goodsprings area is the area that I’m most familiar with, but you have the same thing down in Searchlight, up at Pioche, you know, all around southern Nevada when the mining, the boom was on, the waterholes became very popular spots for people. Then closely behind that came Prohibition and the bootleggers waned all the springs. They had a need UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 12 for the waterholes, out-of-the-way places. Prohibition and the Depression—there was a lot of people congregating on the waterholes. Southern Nevada started to develop, the dam started, people started moving in; consequently, the sheep started being crowded out. Mm-hmm. The disease of domestic livestock has probably taken its toll, but I think the main decline that we see in the local sheep population has been due, strictly, to encroachment on their water, You can’t go into the spring range anywhere. What’s the spring range? The spring range being Mt. Charleston from, let’s say, oh, somewhere around Beatty all the way to the California (unintelligible) up in the (unintelligible) mountains, Mountain Pass, that area there. An area I’m quite familiar with, the change in it, when my grandfather was originally kicking around in those hills, there was a lotta free water, lotta open water. There was a lotta deer, and a lotta sheep; well, now, they more or less turned that entire mountain range into a recreational area—Red Rock, Lee Canyon, Kyle Canyon. But the housing sites, the ski developments, picnic areas, summer homes, what have you—there’s hardly any live water left on the mountain that hasn’t been developed. And that far back, nobody was thinking about using it all up. So, consequently, rather than using a water source and pipe the water down someplace and then build a picnic area, they built the picnic area right where the water was. And it slowly but surely has used up all the water for wildlife on the mountain to where you’re down to the mountain range, now, is almost strictly a recreational area for people, and wildlife, as they used to be around here, are just about nonexistent. How has the wildlife adapted? UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 13 Best it could but it’s dwindled considerably. The animals that you see around here now are the animals that can live well with, you know, human encroachment. You don’t see the quail that you used to run into. You don’t see the numbers of anything that you used to. My grandfather talks about the size of the sheep herds that they used to see around Goodsprings, and he talked about numbers that—our reports show now, the fish and game reports show now, since they have the study up there, they count ‘em with helicopters—my grandfather talks about seeing more sheep in a single day at Goodpsrings than the entire fish and game considers even exist in the entire mountain range today. And this is due strictly to human encroachment. Are there any other wildlife you’re interested in? Well, I’m interested in just about all of it. I just happen to be singled out on desert bighorn sheep ‘cause I grew up in the same environment they did. Mm-hmm. But I’m concerned and interested in just about all of it. I’m quite interested in wildlife, art, and photography but just about totally abandoned the hunting. I go for the comradeship of it now, but I do most of my kicking around the hills no with a 35-millimeter camera and a telephoto lens and a sketchpad and do a little artwork and that type of thing. What are your, if you have any, more motivational aspirations and goals? Well, pretty much, I’d like to say to live happy ever after, would be a nice way to put it, if a guy could think of it that way. I’ve tried being an executive and working strictly for money, and I don’t like that. That does not necessarily make me happy. Business success comes and goes, and it doesn’t seem to be an end in itself. And I enjoy family life. I enjoy being happy, and I think being happy, to me, is success. And it’s whatever it takes to be happy, not necessarily wealthy—UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 14 at home is what I’m striving for—seen the Las Vegas Valley grow from a small town that I grew up in. How many people? Oh, I couldn’t tell you what the population was, but we lived over there in Huntridge, and we lived there at 1304 Sweeney, which is between Fifteenth and Thirteenth Street, over there right near Oakey. And that was the edge of town; I grew up on the edge of town. We used to walk out to what’s now Fifteenth and Oakey—that was an artesian well out there. We used to go out there when I was kid with our bow and arrow and BB guns and hunt for crawdads and (unintelligible) rabbits. There was another artesian well out where the first Von Tobel store was built on Sahara and Maryland Parkway, and then we called that the second artesian well. When you hiked out there, always take your lunch in a canteen—you were gonna be gone all day. I’ve seen it grow from that to, it’s just full of smog and traffic problems. Do you remember the old hotels? Oh, yes. I can remember when the Sahara Hotel was the Club Bingo; across from that was the El Rancho. And by the time you got to the Flamingo Hotel, well, you were well on your way to going to California. We used to go out and visit my parents out in Goodsprings, and that was a pretty good little trek out there. Did you drive? Yes, we drove out to the old highway, the same one that used to go down to Pasadena; that was an all-day project. The freeways weren’t in at that time. How long did it take? Oh, I can remember riding in the backseat with my dad driving the car, and I don’t know, it must’ve taken eight or ten hours to get to Pasadena. The roads were all two-late, and of course, UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 15 we were always going against traffic on the weekends; everybody from California was coming up here. It was just nothing but bumper-to-bumper sea of lights coming and going from the Los Angeles people coming up here. Do you remember when the freeway was put in? Oh yes, it took forever. It’s been taking forever. Why? I have no idea why it takes so long to build a freeway here. It seems like if you go to California, one time you go down there, it isn’t there—the next trip down, it’s built. Here, you sit here and watch this freeway is taking forever, our traffic control in our streets, and we’ve been running five to ten years behind the needs, and we still are. I was just reading the paper where they’re talking about a transit system, they talk about how many buses they’re gonna by. It all sounds good, then you find out it’s gonna take five years for this to happen—well, they need it now, they don’t need it five years from now. They got a problem. Back to when you were a kid and you used to hike to the edge of town when you got older, where did you hike to? Oh, we used to—well we were all doing a lot of our hunting around here. It seemed like it could go and get away from it all in just a pickup truck up to Mt. Charleston, for an example. We could go in the back side of Mt. Charleston, go up Trout Canyon and hike, whatever—never see a soul. And then finally we got farther and farther away. We spent quite a bit of time up in the Mormon Range going up towards Caliente. We’d go up Meadow Valley Wash, up to Jumbo, out of Alamo. And we’d up on White Rock out of Pioche. And all these places, we’d never run into anybody; we had ‘em totally to ourselves. And then it came to the point where a guy needed a four-wheel-drive, they’d kinda stay ahead of the crowd. And then they get to the point where you UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 16 had to have a horse to stay away from the crowd. And now it’s at the point where you can’t get away from the crowd; now we go to Montana. Up to where? Well, we like the area up there around Yellowstone. There’s a lotta convenience up there, but you don’t have to go very far to get away from the crowd up there. So we’re getting very crowded down here? Yes, very crowded down here. I had a friend of mine from the Army one time tell me that my idea of pollution was barbed wire, and he may be right. It’s too crowded for me down here anymore. Do you remember when the Test Site was very active? Oh, yes. I can remember standing out in the school grounds at John S. Park and watching the atomic bombs go off, watching the flash in the sky and mushroom cloud from over the horizon. When they first started doing it, they were always in the wee hours of the morning. And of course, they’d notify everybody when there was going to be a bomb. And my mom would set the alarm and she’d wake up the whole family. We’d go out in the front yard—most of the neighbors would be out in the street, and we’d sit there and have a countdown, listen to the radio. And pretty soon, the whole sky would just light up like it was broad daylight. And then you’d feel for the tremor. Do you think that has contaminated the underground water supply? I don’t know that it’s contaminated the underground water supply. I know that it’s definitely contaminated quite an area out there that borders on the sheep refuge. I’ve been out in the area of the bombing range, Indian Springs Bombing Range, where it overlaps the Desert National UNLV University Libraries Carl Ciliax 17 Wildlife Refuge, and that borders on the Test Site. And I’m sure that there’s been quite a bit of contamination up in that area, but— Have you ever seen any evidence of that? Only on the bombing range per se, which has nothing to do with the atomic testing. I haven’t seen any evidence whatsoever, but it’s quite obvious from published reports on the contamination that it’s in the range itself, the livestock that they’ve subjected to these tests (unintelligible) wildlife—they’ve subjected the wildlife to these tests inadvertently just because it’s there. So, you can’t help but expect that on the refuge, but I don’t think it’s widespread. I grew up with it, and it doesn’t scare me, and I don’t think it’s been detrimental to the area, per se. I know you can’t see radiation, and maybe, you know, I’m naïve enough to think that just because I can’t see it, it’s not here, but it doesn’t show up on the sheep refuge. Twenty years, they’ve been studying the sheep up there, and there’s no evidence th