From the Lincy Institute "Perspectives from the COVID-19 Pandemic" Oral History Project (MS-01178) -- Elected official interviews file.

With so much emphasis put on the growth of Las Vegas and Henderson over the past thirty years, we often forget about the development of the others cities in the Valley. Expansive growth in Southern Nevada in the mid-twentieth century shows the region being one of the last bastions of agricultural existence, and Tim Hafen has been a major player in the development of the city of Pahrump. Born in St. George, Utah, and raised in Mesquite, Nevada, he graduated from Virgin Valley High School and attended Dixie College. Before the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was called as such, his father introduced him to the working of the land through dairy and hay farming, where a young Tim decided he would never milk a cow again. His rejection of cow milking didn’t deter him from following the influence of his father after he married his wife, Eleanor, in 1951 and moved to Pahrump to become a cotton farmer. At that time, there were only 150 people in the area with a third of the population being from the Paiute tribe. Once the city was incorporated in 1964, he founded the Pahrump Valley Utility Company to get electricity to the area along with Amargosa Valley. Top crops at the time included cotton, alfalfa as well as wheat that were picked by Mexican farm laborers used under a yearlong contract with the Bracero program. vi In this interview, Hafen shares how he began his career in politics from getting called for grand jury in 1963. From 1966–1974, he was a member of the legislature, where he served two terms in the Old Capital building and held various positions such as Chairman of the State Board of Agriculture for twelve years and President of the Nevada Farm Bureau. He was speaker pro tem and Chairman of the taxation committee and decided to call it quits because of the Nixon scandal. Between 1974 and 1975 Hafen ended his political career, which he did before brothels began to come to the area later in the decade. In 1982, in the wake of the gasoline crisis, Hafen, like other Pahrump cotton farmers, could not afford to continue farming; he decided to shift from farming to development. His first development done was Cottonwoods at Hafen Ranch, which was on 160 acres of alluvial fan, non-farmable land; in 2000 he opened his second subdivision, Artesia at Hafen Ranch.

On March 3, 1980, Frank Fusco interviewed Elissa Miller (born October 29th, 1935 in San Francisco, California) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In this interview, Mrs. Miller talks about her life in Virginia City and Reno, Nevada. She discusses the growth in Reno and the problems that came from that. She also speaks about living life in Virginia City, a much smaller town in Nevada. She talks about the people who live and work there, as well as some of the things the town is known for, such as the International Camel and Ostrich Races that are held annually.

The daughter of a soldier, Linda Lintner and her mother traveled from North Carolina to Overton, Nevada to stay with Linda's grandparents when she was only six weeks old. After her father joined the family, they moved to Las Vegas where both her mother and her father started working at the Post Office. Linda attended local elementary and middle schools in the valley, and in due time, Rancho High School. In this interview, Linda shares not only her memories of growing up in Las Vegas but also fascinating stories about the almost decade long round the world sailing journey that she and her second husband began in 1986. In the course of the decade, Linda became a qualified diver, and expert sailor, and developed a lasting appreciation for the world, its oceans - and the skills you learn when you live on a boat with one other person for so very long. Since their return, Linda has been keeping busy, volunteering many hours with local veterans homes and the church - we are fortunate that she was able to spend time with our interviewer, too, to share her memories of growing up in Las Vegas.

Interviewed by Monserrath Hernández and Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez. Eric Calvillo was born into a Mexican American household in San Jose, California in 1980. As he recalls, it was there that his fixation with the colors and recurring themes of his family's Mexican roots told hold of his imagination. Today, this is core to his growing art career. Art has not been his sole ambition. Before moving to Las Vegas in 2005, Calvillo attended a San Francisco culinary school. He relocated to Las Vegas to complete his culinary internship at the prestigious Picasso restaurant at the Bellagio. Eventually, he began to pursue a professional art career as a painter of Día de los Muertos motifs and beautifully portray the Mexican tradition of celebrating the lives of the deceased. Through his use of acrylics and oil on canvas, Calvillo conveys the emotion of his culture and then, being a skilled carpenter, crafts his own frames.

On February 28, 1980, Paul Gentle interviewed Luella Knuckles (b. 1910 in Impolla, Texas) about life as an African-American in Las Vegas, Nevada. Knuckles talks to Gentle about the conditions that African-Americans lived in and the discrimination they faced when first arriving to the city. Knuckles, in particular, spends a portion of the interview discussing the segregated layout of Las Vegas and the jobs and opportunities that were available for the black community in a segregated town. Moreover, she provides anecdotes about her deceased husband’s employment, their experience buying and repairing a property by themselves, and the changes in attitudes as the city desegregated. The conversation later focuses on the Church’s place in the African-American community, education and participation in church activities, and Knuckle’s personal love for books and Bible study.