Transcript of interview with Sherwin "Scoop" Garside by David Anderson, March 25, 1976

UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside i An Interview with Sherman (Scoop) Garside An Oral History Conducted by David M. Anderson 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 Sherman (Scoop) Garside ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 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 Sherman (Scoop) Garside iv Abstract On March 25, 1976, David Anderson interviewed Sherman “Scoop” Garside (born May 26, 1915 in Tonopah, Nevada) about his life in Southern Nevada. Garside first talks about his father’s business in running an early Nevada newspaper and his personal knowledge of the early mining that took place in different parts of Nevada. He also talks about living in the town of Tonopah, the American Indians who lived in the area, and his experiences from living in Las Vegas. Garside also mentions the beginnings of gambling in Las Vegas, the population boom periods of Las Vegas, and his experiences in witnessing the aboveground atomic testing. UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 1 This is the tape on Sherwin Scoop Garside for the Nevada Historical Society, and this morning I’m going to be asking Scoop about his life here in Nevada and some of the things that he remembers from his life. Scoop, where were you first born? First born? Okay, I was born in Tonopah, in central Nevada, Nye County, Nevada, on May 26th, 1915. And what was your father’s occupation? My father, at that time, was a publisher of a newspaper in Manhattan, Nevada, and in December in the year in which I was born in 1915, he started a newspaper in Tonopah called the Tonopah Times. How long did he have that newspaper in Manhattan, Scoop? He worked newspapers in Manhattan, I believe around 1909, 1908, to 1915. Just a few things, you remember your father having told you any of these stories, what was it like running a newspaper back in 1909 in Nevada? Well, they had to do everything by hand—hand feed the presses and hand feed the type, just like the individual letters of the type, and put it into a chase, and then print them out onto a newspaper. It was very difficult, but there was a story in the background of the pioneer newspapers in Nevada—this was (unintelligible). Now, everything is automatic. It’s much easier now, and they can do it many times as fast. How long was it until the newspaper business actually had electricity or some form of energy in which to use the presses? Well, they had electricity in those days, but the motor would take the piece of paper to the flat where the paper was printed on, and then they would feed the paper in and have it printed and UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 2 pull it out with the other hand—just a constant motion like this, in and out, very slow. And this was the same way it was done on newspapers. Did they have a wire service of any kind in those days? Very little wire service. That wasn’t developed until, oh, after 1915, I would imagine, ’15 to ’20. My father started, or purchased, during his last time, fourteen newspapers in the state of Nevada, which is quite a record. Also, I remember seeing that your father was the first postmaster, or he was a postmaster. He was a postmaster. He became postmaster in Las Vegas in 1933, and he retired in 1953, twenty years’ service. And at the same time, he was also operating the newspaper? Yes. He was the three-fourths owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, in partnership with Al Cahlan. A.E. Cahlan took twenty-five percent of the operation. And going back to Manhattan and Tonopah, did your father ever have any mining interests in Nevada? No. The only interest he had, he was a great believer in mining because of his status in the community and his place of residence, so he did (unintelligible) a lot of hungry prospectors. They’d come in and give them money, they’d go out in the hills looking for gold or silver if they could find the value, but the (unintelligible) stock corporation, they would give him stock for the money he’d give them. And then one time he told me (unintelligible). Really? I can imagine. Okay, now, when you were growing up in Tonopah, I’m curious as to where you got your water. My water came from an underground lake about twenty miles east of Tonopah in the valley, and the area was called Eyepatch. It was piped over the hills into Tonopah, and the water it come UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 3 from was very famous—it was said to be (unintelligible) delicious water, pure and (unintelligible) beautiful drinking water. And most of the mines pumped their water up their hydraulically? Did they have steam pumps, or how did they do that? They had steam pumps in the early days, and then they had, later on, electric pumps, of course. Steam pumps, I think, were much like in the Comstock Lode days, they had steam pumps. And lands in Manhattan and Tonopah had electric pumps. Where did most of the wood come from? They (unintelligible) wood in from California on (unintelligible). All (unintelligible) by roadway? Yes. How many schools were in Tonopah in those days? There was one school, a combination high school and grammar school. And about how many kids went to that school, Scoop? As far as I can remember, I think it was around 300 when I lived in Tonopah. I went to school from kindergarten on through to my junior year in high school, and then we moved to Las Vegas in 1931, at which time I matriculated at the Las Vegas High School as a junior. And now Tonopah was having quite a boom, as I understand, in those days. What was the biggest ore that was being mined? Silver was the big ore in Tonopah. They (unintelligible) silver mining camps. In fact, there’s a motel in Tonopah now called the Silver Queen, and it’s built right on an old mine dump in the center of town. And their slogan for the motel is, “Sleep with the Silver Queen, sleep on a bed of silver,” which is, in fact, true because the mine (unintelligible) right at that particular spot. UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 4 So, probably if (unintelligible) low grade silver still lying beneath it, huh? Oh, yes. Did you ever, you must have had some contact with the other (unintelligible) in those days. Can you tell me about them? Yes, I had the experience, I think, which is quite rare in these days of participating in three different gold strike gold rushes as a boy. The first one I remember was in a town called (unintelligible), which is about twenty-five or thirty miles southwest of Tonopah. And two young Tonopah teenagers found a rich gold strike out there (unintelligible), and it created quite a stir throughout the United States, and a gold rush actually went on. The people drove their cars and their trucks and even some (unintelligible) and claimed all the ground around the strike, and it was recorded (unintelligible), one of the early (unintelligible) news operations, and they came in and asked all the people in town to (unintelligible)—they put the camera on the hill and (unintelligible) people come charging up the hill as if they were running a gold strike. And I was right in the front. I was carrying a newspaper bag, and I was (unintelligible) right up that hill—a lot of fun. Then another strike was (unintelligible)—it was what the strikers held—(unintelligible) was a gold camp which is found in the present-day Nevada Test Site, and if you go up on the hill overlooking this particular area, you can still see the (unintelligible) or the subdivision that they had in those days of (unintelligible). And there was a brief strike, too; they found a big pocket of gold and mined it out, and they could find no more. And then another strike that I went to in gold rush was at the Gold Ace Mine, which is about eight miles south of Beatty. And it was very high grade ore. In fact, I saw a piece of ore about two foot by six inches across by ten inches high—it was almost solid gold, just a beautiful piece of mineral specimen worth many, many dollars because it was unusual. Gold (unintelligible). UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 5 You don’t see gold like that very often, though, do you? No, not like that. That’s the richest piece of gold I ever saw in my life. Scoop, I’m curious, how about the Indians in those days? Did they frequent the town as much? Were there mostly Paiutes around Tonopah? Yes, Paiutes and Shoshones; they were (unintelligible) people (unintelligible) I know about—there used to be an Indian man coming to town. He was a short, heavyset cowboy, and they called him Wagon Johnny. And he had a little boy who came into town to live to give his little boy a chance for some education, and the school didn’t have a name for the little boy. And his father’s name was Wagon Johnny, so they called the little boy Johnny Cart, which was quite a joke in the town, but everybody liked the family. It was a good family. And they remember very well a real old Indian woman; her name was Mary Francisco, and she used to sit on the curb in front of the newspaper office—and very kind and sweet old woman—she spoke broken English. And she used to (unintelligible) the newspaper family would bring out a marrowbone, and she would suck on the marrowbone in front of the plant. That was where she’d eat. And she was quite old, and she had Indian tattoo marks on her cheeks. Of what tribe was she? I think she was Shoshone, but I’m not sure about that. And her daughter was a tomboy in Tonopah, and her daughter’s name was Ferry Francisco, and her daughter was an extremely athletic type of a girl, and quite tough. And she ran in a gang full of boys then, and she could beat any one of them boys in that gang; she was that good. She came to Las Vegas many years after I left Tonopah, and she looked me up, and she said, “Sherman?” I said, “Yes, Ferry?” She said, “I never did whoop you, did I?” I said, “No, you didn’t.” She said, “I guess it was ‘cause you were so little,” she said. (Laughs) UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 6 (Laughs) But Ferry was quite a popular person, too, in Tonopah. Did most of the Indian kids live on a reservation at the time, or did they have an Indian reservation here? The closest one was at Duck Creek, or at (unintelligible), and they were well over a hundred miles away. They lived mostly in the little shacks around the edges of town. There wasn’t any reservation; they didn’t live in (unintelligible) anymore. Did they ever do any turquoise mining? I always hear about the Indians in the southwest doing turquoise mining. Nye County and Tonopah had—Lone Mountain (unintelligible) fabulously beautiful turquoise, and the (unintelligible) area near Tonopah was also big for its turquoise. It’s a turquoise belt through there. Nye County and the Austin, Nevada area are both good for turquoise. But I don’t think the Indians had any hand in mining, and I don’t think they did much (unintelligible). The (unintelligible) came from the New Mexicans and Arizonians, what I know. Did the Indians ever do much training? There must have been a lot of people moving in, moving out, from, you know, like, tourists and whatnot coming to see the gold rush and what not. Did the Indians ever benefit in any way—I mean, did they ever trade baskets or anything—did they make baskets? My mother lived in Manhattan, but her father was a miner and also a stockbroker, and Manhattan is about forty miles northeast of Tonopah, a little mining town up in the mountains, up in the hills with cedar pine trees—it’s a beautiful little town. It’s almost a ghost town now, but it’s a beautiful area. My mother and her two sisters and brother were brought there from Indiana. Their mother and father brought them out—my grandfather. (Unintelligible) a little story about my UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 7 grandfather. His name was Omar Maris, and he was a reporter for the Chicago Newspaper, and the newspaper sent him into the gold strike at the Yukon in Alaska, the turn of the century, and he wrote many articles about the gold strike and the people that made up the strike, the miners who went up there. And used to tell me (unintelligible) how typical it was, and how many people had died, frankly, to navigate this steep hill. And he found an ore of gold over there but not enough to make him wealthy. So then he came into Nevada and started mining right after the gold strike had been made in the town of Manhattan, Nevada. He brought his family there, and for many, many years, he worked the mines, and always, never did hit it rich, but he was always working hard. And I used to go out and visit with him when he was out in his mines, and I can remember him as a wonderful, fine man—hardworking and dedicated to his family. And (unintelligible) last mine, there’s a mountain the Silver Creek area about eight or ten miles north of Belmont, there’s a chute there, a tall peak, fairly tall peak, and call this (unintelligible) after him, ‘cause his mine (unintelligible) base of that mountain. It was a happy day for me when I (unintelligible). And you were talking about your grandmother in Manhattan. Yes, my mother, as a young girl in Manhattan, used to trade with the Indians for food or mining or whatever she could use to trade with—food or (unintelligible) she had for baskets. And I now have her basket collection, which I’m going to eventually give to a museum or someone who can appreciate this type of thing. What kind of Indians were these (unintelligible) that she was (unintelligible)? I think these were Shoshone Indians, but there again, I’m not sure who made these baskets. Well, Scoop, I’d like to ask you a little bit about the utilities in Tonopah and what (unintelligible) you had and things like that. UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 8 Well, utilities were mainly electricity and coal. They had power for the lighting (unintelligible) electricity. Water was (unintelligible). We did not have a sewer system at that time, so we all had outhouses in the back of the house. And I can remember when the snow would come through the little (unintelligible) in the outhouse and sift under the toilet seat and how badly I’d hate to go out there. I’m pretty sure that I had lots of constipation when I was a young child because I didn’t want to go out to that outhouse. But anyway, my mother gave us baths in the kitchen in the big king tub, a washtub, and later on, we had the luxury of a bathroom when they had (unintelligible) in Tonopah—I had a bathtub. And that was a great step forward in our family. Oh, I bet it was. Can you tell me, who was the mayor? There was no mayor in Tonopah. The town was run by a county commission. And I don’t remember who the name was at that time. I remember they had a sheriff named Bill Thomas who was a wonderfully kind, good man—was sheriff for many years. And widely known was (unintelligible) lawmen in the far west, (unintelligible) lawmen, but a very kind man. He’s been dead quite a few years now, but everybody loved him. You know, I’ve heard stories of how, like, when they first had the Comstock up in Reno, there was a lot of violence. Did you come across this? Oh, yes. The claim jumping and things like that? Yes, there was violence in Tonopah. Claim jumping is right—they even, some of the mine owners (unintelligible) claim jumping. At that time, there was a criminal, I mean, a gunman by the name of Wyatt Earp, and then (unintelligible) in Tonopah got him into Tonopah, and these claim jumpers and the other people that were violating a law (unintelligible) Wyatt Earp did UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 9 (unintelligible)—there was no violence. See, (unintelligible) stopped that type of cooperation in Tonopah. The real Wyatt Earp? The real Wyatt Earp, yes, uh-huh. This is the—I don’t have the time he was there, but there have been write-ups about Wyatt Earp just in Tonopah. Scoop, can you tell me, was there a big banking interest in Tonopah in those days? Yes, there’s a banking interest and a stock market, and the stock brokerage house there, where the local people watched the stock operation daily, and it was (unintelligible) San Francisco (unintelligible) was. What bank was it? It was the First National Bank, I believe. First National Bank of California? Nevada. Oh, Nevada. And when they had the big fire in San Francisco, it left a lot of capital that was being used to promote mining in Nevada (unintelligible) no longer available. And it did hurt (unintelligible) financially, especially from working (unintelligible) Manhattan was hurt by it, and Tonopah was, too. The big fire in— It occurred in San Francisco. Were the railroads privately owned? Well, the Southern Pacific came into Tonopah. And they provided you with all the lumber for the mining? UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 10 Yes, they brought it. And removed the ore from the mines? Yes. They (unintelligible)? Well, they removed—there were big mills Tonopah and (unintelligible) fifteen miles southwest of Tonopah, the town of (unintelligible), had a big mill there. The ore was reduced and processed—they could run the mill. And the (unintelligible) came and they shipped the bars of gold to the mint from there to Tonopah. How much was a miner paid in those days? Do you remember? I have no memory from that. No memory? If they were (unintelligible), Tonopah was made up of Yugoslavians, Czechoslovakians, and Finns—there was a Finnish population there—Mexicans, and Indians, and some (unintelligible) people—(unintelligible) Jacksons they called them—and they were compatible. Everybody had a good time in Tonopah. I also read about another anecdote, and that was when your father took you to the fights one time. Why don’t you tell me who was with you there. Oh, yes. I think I was talking about Will Rogers. Will Rogers came to town, and my father being on covers from the newspaper, he came by to visit. My father also (unintelligible) daily column, Will Rogers’s column at that time, so Will came by to (unintelligible). And after that, he took me, and after that, he went down and had a bowl of chili, a little chili joint downtown because Will Rogers said that he liked that type of food. How long did he stay in Nevada? UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 11 Oh, he was just here overnight to visit, just passing through and he wanted to meet the publisher of the paper. Okay, I think we’re running out of tape on this side, Scoop, so we’ll just shift it over here to the other side. [Audio cuts out] Okay, Scoop. Let’s move from Tonopah now to Las Vegas. How old were you when you moved? I was sixteen; we moved here, I think, around June 1st. I had just turned sixteen, which brings to mind the story—one of the trips we took down from Tonopah, it’s (unintelligible) dirt road (unintelligible) today, and it took two days to come down. The first day was (unintelligible) about midway, and the second day would be (unintelligible) to Las Vegas. We started off in Tonopah this particular day, and the hotel was full of (unintelligible). We went over to Rhyolite, was just four or five miles away. We camped in the old railroad depot at Rhyolite, which is now a bar in Rhyolite. At that time, it was a ghost town, and no one lived there at all. It was just deserted buildings. So, we camped in that (unintelligible) and pull out our blankets and stuffed under the floor of the inside on the floor of the depot, woke up the next morning, I reached my hand up, felt something hard over the, next on my right, and woke up and I had been sitting next to a dead cow all night. Some cow had gone in there and died in the old depot. (Laughs) (Laughs) So then we came under the town, but the road was very miserable in those days, as it was anyplace. There was no grading and there was just, follow the trails and bumps and the (unintelligible) come into the road—and always dust, lots of dust. You could see cars coming for many, many miles across the desert by the dust streak—you could tell how many cars were UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 12 always coming for us. You can’t do that, of course, now; you can’t see a car unless you see the flasher, the reflection of the sun on the windshield (unintelligible). That’s interesting. You wouldn’t think to look for a car like that in these days. What do you remember of Las Vegas the first time on (unintelligible)? What kind of a town was it? Well, Las Vegas was a town of—happy little town, good people (unintelligible) in Tonopah. They worked together. When I came to town, I imagine there were three or four thousand people living here. It was right at the beginning of construction of Boulder Dam. My father purchased the Clark County Review, a weekly newspaper, from a man named Charles Corkhill in 1926. And he became partners with Al Cahlan—my father was the majority owner of course—became partners then, and Al Cahlan came down from Elko, Nevada, where he had been (unintelligible) to run the paper for my dad. My dad continued running the paper in Tonopah. In 1931, my father decided to move his family from Tonopah to Las Vegas, so we did. First place we lived—one of the first places we lived—was a little ranch, which (unintelligible) now at the extreme end of North Highland, up on the hill, and it was a little forty-acre ranch with a beautiful spring in it. It was called Uncle Tom’s Cabin by the natives—why, I don’t know. I never did (unintelligible). It was an old Indian campground; I used to find lots of arrowheads in that area. The spring was nice, and we grew vegetable gardens, we (unintelligible) swimming pool, the spring flowed through the pool all day long—it was quite nice, nice living. Then we later moved into town. But what I can remember about those days, it was the Depression years, and there were a great many men had come to Las Vegas to seek work on the dam, the dam construction had started. And these men came here broke, they were dead broke. They were hungry. And they used to camp along Las Vegas Creek, which flowed from the springs, which is near the intersection of the West Fremont Expressway and Rancho Drive. The (unintelligible) springs are going up the UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 13 expressway above about three-quarters of a mile west of the intersection of Rancho Road. People driving up the expressway could see this old (unintelligible) over there—that later was put over the spring. There were other springs in that area, and they all flowed into a common creek, which came down to the Old Las Vegas Fort, which was the site of the early Mormon Mission, which was put in there, I think it was 1855 or 1856. And then when the creek flowed from that spring down past the intersection north of Bonanza and Main, kept on flowing down to past the old present Elk’s Lodge and the Old Mormon Fort, and spread out in the valley below. The valley below is where Rancho High School is—one of the areas is located there. And this area below is called The Meadows. The Mormon people that came here (unintelligible), it’s also later where the ranch that followed the Mormon people in here would advance to that area—the water was there, available. Anyway, (unintelligible) tell you about these four men that came into town in ’30, ’31—they would camp along the creek (unintelligible) there, and they would try and get food. They would rummage through garbage cans and just anything ‘cause they’re hungry waiting for work. And I think it was in ’31 that they started playing bingo in the Boulder Club, and they’d have beans to use as markers on the bingo cards—their navy beans—and these four men would go in there and take pockets full of these beans out of the racks where the beans were placed for marking purposes, put it in their pockets, and then they’d go down along the creek and build a fire and then boil beans, and then there’d be their subsistence. And the Boulder Club knew it and (unintelligible) they didn’t object; they just had more beans to put in their place (unintelligible). That’s one way they helped the guys out. That brings us to interesting questions: when did gambling start in Las Vegas? I think it was ’31. Was it legalized by the state? UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 14 Yes, it was the state. Were they doing a lot of gambling before that, or what? Well— Or what they used to do usually, I guess? No, I don’t think—they were pretty honest about it. There was a lot of Prohibition law in effect when I was a young boy in Tonopah and also in Las Vegas (unintelligible). That was scrutinized very carefully by Prohibition Agents. They would come into town, and I can remember this little boy that worked (unintelligible) were coming to town—they would be passing from bar to bar in Tonopah, and they said the, “The Prohis are coming, the Prohis are coming,” so they’d close the bars up, and they’d take their liquor and hide so that they wouldn’t catch them. And the whiskey was made in stills. They’d go out in a secret area someplace and distill this alcohol—they called it (unintelligible)—I don’t know what the name they called it in those days—but it was sold, and men liked it because it was the only thing available. But then there was so much crime attributed to Prohibition, and it led to so much crime that they repealed the act. And so then there were no more Prohis coming into town, Prohibition Agents. When gambling started in Nevada, what form did it take? Did they have slot machines, or? Yes, they had slot machines, and they had the basic games, like 21, they craps, roulette, and Farobank. And they also had the poker tables. Would you say that gambling was more or less for the locals, or was it to attract people to come in? It was at that time, but it later on, because of the fact that Las Vegas (unintelligible) was mainly aimed at the outsiders (unintelligible) into town. They brought the money, and they still are; UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 15 that’s where the major source of Las Vegas income is right now is from the tourist (unintelligible). What was it that really started making Las Vegas grow? Was it the dam? Oh, yes. There have been several boom periods in Las Vegas, called boom periods, when there’s a (unintelligible) given by a certain project. For instance, the railroad was the first impetus in town in 1904, I think—it was in ’04, ’05 when the town was laid out and (unintelligible) at the Las Vegas Auction. And that’s when people like (unintelligible) and Bill (unintelligible) and Ed Von Tobel bought their prime pieces of ground was at this auction. And then that was the first boom. The second boom when this was, happened quite a few years later, was when they build Boulder Dam because Vegas has the source of hiring the employees. They created the town of Boulder City, which shocked Las Vegas at that time, but it (unintelligible) because Boulder City was such a charming, wonderful little town, and it’s a good neighbor. At that time, that meant a loss of revenue to Las Vegas, but Las Vegas gained in the long run as a tourist center, and mainly because they began to push forward by the building of Boulder Dam. I’ve got a question, Scoop, that intrigues me very much. Back in those days, we had a natural bounty to the east of his. How did people get across the Colorado, let’s say, coming from Phoenix, Arizona, or from Southern Arizona, to get into Las Vegas? I’ll (unintelligible) to that, but let me first finish about this boom. Okay. The next one that came along was the tourist industry (unintelligible), and then the World War II, they had to build the town of Henderson to mine manganese at the manganese mine out there, and they processed at that time, and then it later developed into a manufacturing center like titanium metals and some of the chemical companies that had been out—this was another boom UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 16 area. And then the atomic energy boom—Nellis Air Force Base came in about the same time as Henderson, which was an economic push forward—and then the Atomic Energy Commission’s testing program, which proved to be a source of employment for a great many Las Vegas people, and (unintelligible) that they had good wages. Did you see any of the aboveground shots? Oh, yes. I wasn’t working for the Review-Journal at that time. My father sold the paper at that time, so I was in the printing business. But I also wrote as a (unintelligible) reporter for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. This gave me access to all the official events around town; in fact, I was a legitimate reporter. So I used to go out to the Test Site when they had the aboveground tests, and we would be within five or six or seven miles of those big tests and watch it go up. And it’s a very thrilling sight. It’s describable—beautiful and awesome and terrible dangerous, and always had a feeling of fear when I went out to watch them. And there were people nowadays that are so cautious about radioactivity. At the Test Site, they won’t take a shot out if there’s any wind blowing because they’re afraid that there might be a threat from this explosion underground that might bring some radioactivity up in the air, and they might (unintelligible) civilized areas. But in those days, they didn’t think much about this. They’d blow these things off—they’d shoot these big shots off. I remember one time, I was in (unintelligible), and there was a shot scheduled—we all, those of us that went up to the Test Site (unintelligible) go up, and you could see the big flashing lights (unintelligible) you could see it from Downtown Las Vegas—the black smoke going from the sky. And (unintelligible) Las Vegas. So I got out my camera, and I took a big picture—and I got it in my file someplace—of this mushroom cloud floating over Las Vegas, and the picture was taken at the corner of Fifth and Fremont, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Sherman (Scoop) Garside 17 Boulevard South, and Fremont—not Fremont, but Charleston. But if the same situation occurred now, it would be a panic in town. But in those days, they thought nothing about it. It didn’t cause too much damage, huh? I mean, the radioactivity? Now we go back to—you wanted to talk about the transportation across the Colorado River? (Unintelligible) There was Jim Cashman, who was the (unintelligible) the late father of Jimmy Cashman, Jr., who runs the Cashman Cadillac in town—he and a partner by the name of Schwartz—I don’t remember the man’s first name, but they were in the ferry at the entrance to Black Canyon where the dam is now located. It’s the area just a little bit into the canyon from the big large section of Lake Mead—it’s right across the dam, it’s right there—and it ran across the, they took the boats out of the ferry, took the cars across the river, and went up the Kingman Wash on the other side—it was a dirt road at the other side in the middle of the rough country over to Kingman, that was one way. And the next way was just down the next ferry, I think is down below, down at Needles, would be the next place—had a bridge across the Colorado at Needles. And the next bridge above that would be up into Utah. But there wasn’t much traffic across the river, ‘cause there was just no way to get across. But then the dam came in, then they had finished the bridge right there across—the dam itself is the bridge