Interview with Edmund Fleming

An Oral History conducted and edited by
Robert D. McCracken

Nye County Town History Project
Nye County, Nevada

Tonopah
1988

COPYRIGHT 1990
Nye County Town History Project
Nye County Commissioners
Tonopah, Nevada
89049

1988

i i i

Preface v

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction ix

CHAPTER ONE 1

Early days in the east; the Diemels of the Pahrump Ranch;
a trip from Virginia to Nevada; the Pahrump Ranch itself;
a dude ranch; ranch work and well-digging.

CHAPTER TOD 10

Ed returns to the Pahrump Valley as a school teacher; life
with Pop Buol; early valley residents.

CHAPTER THREE 21

More early residents; moves to Goodsprings and Nelson;
mining; a move to Oregon, then back to the desert and
teaching; on Lois Kellogg; hot tempers in the area.

CHAPTER POUR 31

Frontier justice; funding for schools.

Index 34

iv

PREFACE

The Nye County Town History Project (NCTHP) engages in interviewing
people who can provide firsthand descriptions of the individuals, events,
and places that give history its substance. The products of this research
are the tapes of the interviews and their transcriptions.

In themselves, oral history interviews are not history. However,
they often contain valuable primary source material, as useful in the
process of historiography as the written sources to which historians have
customarily turned. Verifying the accuracy of all of the statements made
in the course of an interview would require more time and money than the
NCTHP 's operating budget permits. The program can vouch that the
statements were made, but it cannot attest that they are free of error.
Accordingly, oral histories should be read with the same prudence that the
reader exercises when consulting government records, newspaper accounts,
diaries, and other sources of historical information.

It is the policy of the NCTHP to produce transcripts that are as
close to verbatim as possible, but some alteration of the text is
generally both unavoidable and desirable. When human speech is captured
in print the result can be a morass of tangled syntax, false starts, and
incomplete sentences, sometimes verging on incoherency. The type font
contains no symbols for the physical gestures and the diverse vocal
modulations that are integral parts of communication through speech.
Experience shows that totally verbatim transcripts are often largely
unreadable and therefore a waste of the resources expended in their
production. While keeping alterations to a minimum the NCTHP will,

v

in preparing a text:

a. generally delete false starts, redundancies and the uhs , ahs and
other noises with which speech is often sprinkled;

b. occasionally compress language that would be confusing to the
reader in unaltered form;

c. rarely shift a portion of a transcript to place it in its proper
context;

d. enclose in [brackets] explanatory information or words that were
not uttered but have been added to render the text intelligible;
and

e. make every effort to correctly spell the names of all individuals
and places, recognizing that an occasional word may be misspelled
because no authoritative source on its correct spelling was found.

vi

As project director, I would like to express ray deep appreciation to
those who participated in the Nye County Town History Project (NCTHP) . It
was an honor and a privilege to have the opportunity to obtain oral
histories f rora so many wonderful individuals . I was welcomed into many
homes — in many cases as a stranger — and was allowed to share in the
recollection of local history. In a number of cases I had the opportunity
to interview Nye County residents whom I have known and admired since I
was a teenager; these experiences were especially gratifying. I thank the
residents throughout Nye County and southern Nevada — too numerous to
mention by name — who provided assistance, information, and photographs.
They helped make the successful completion of this project possible.

Appreciation goes to Chairman Joe S. Garcia, Jr. , Robert N. "Bobby"
Revert, and Patricia S. Mankins, the Nye County commissioners who
initiated this project. Mr. Garcia and Mr. Revert, in particular, showed
deep interest and unyielding support for the project from its inception.
Thanks also go to current commissioners Richard L. Carver and Barbara J.
Raper, who have since joined Mr. Revert on the board and who have
continued the project with enthusiastic support. Stephen T. Bradhurst,
Jr., planning consultant for Nye County, gave unwavering support and
advocacy of the project within Nye County and before the State of Nevada
Nuclear Waste Project Office and the United States Department of Energy;
both entities provided funds for this project. Thanks are also extended
to Mr. Bradhurst for his advice and input regarding the conduct of the
research and for constantly serving as a sounding board when
methodological problems were worked out. This project would never have

vii

become a reality without the enthusiastic support of the Nye County

commissioners and Mr. Bradhurst.

Jean Charney served as administrative assistant, editor, indexer,

and typist throughout the project; her services have been indispensable.

Louise Terrell provided considerable assistance in transcribing many of

the oral histories; Barbara Douglass also transcribed a number of

interviews. Transcribing, typing, editing, and indexing were provided at

various times by Alice Levine, Jodie Hanson, Mike Green, and Cynthia

Tremblay. Jared Charney contributed essential word processing skills.

Mai re Hayes, Michelle Starika, Anita Coryell, Michelle Welsh, Lindsay

Schumacher, and Jodie Hanson shouldered the herculean task of proofreading

the oral histories. Gretchen Loeffler and Bambi McCracken assisted in

numerous secretarial and clerical duties. Phillip Earl of the Nevada

Historical Society contributed valuable support and criticism throughout

the project, and Tom King at the Oral History Program of the University of

Nevada at Reno served as a consulting oral historian. Much deserved

thanks are extended to all these persons.

All material for the NCTHP was prepared with the support of the U.S.

Department of Energy, Grant No. DE-PG08-89NV10820. However, any opinions,

findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein are those of

the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of DOE.

— Robert D. McCracken
Tonopah, Nevada
June 1990

viii

INTRODUCTION

Historians generally consider the year 1890 as the end of the
American frontier. By then, most of the western United States had been
settled, ranches and farms developed, communities established, and roads
and railroads constructed. The nuning boomtowns, based on the lure of
overnight riches from newly developed lodes, were but a memory.

Although Nevada was granted statehood in 1864, examination of any map
of the state from the late 1800s shows that while much of the state was
mapped and its geographical features named, a vast region — stretching from
Belmont south to the Las Vegas meadows, comprising most of Nye County —
remained largely unsettled and unmapped. In 1890 most of southcentral
Nevada remained very much a frontier, and it continued to be for at least
another twenty years.

The great mining booms at Tonopah (1900), Goldfield (1902), and
Rhyolite (1904) represent the last major flowering of what might be called
the Old West in the United States. Consequently, southcentral Nevada,
notably Nye County, remains close to the American frontier; closer,
perhaps, than any other region of the American West. In a real sense, a
significant part of the frontier can still be found in southcentral
Nevada. It exists in the attitudes, values, lifestyles, and memories of
area residents. The frontier-like character of the area also is visible
in the relatively undisturbed quality of the natural environment, most of
it essentially untouched by human hands.

A survey of written sources on southcentral Nevada's history reveals
some material from the boomtown period from 1900 to about 1915, but very
little on the area after around 1920. The volume of available sources

ix

varies from town to town: A fair amount of literature, for instance, can
be found covering Tonopah's first two decades of existence, and the town
has had a newspaper continuously since its first year. In contrast,
relatively little is known about the early days of Gabbs, Round Mountain,
Manhattan, Beatty, Amargosa Valley, and Pahrump. Gabbs 's only newspaper
was published intermittently between 1974 and 1976. Round Mountain's only
newspaper, the Round Mountain Nugget , was published between 1906 and 1910.
Manhattan had newspaper coverage for most of the years between 1906 and
1922. Amargosa Valley has never had a newspaper; Beatty 's independent
paper folded in 1912. Pahrump 's first newspaper did not appear until
1971. All six comnunities received only spotty coverage in the newspapers
of other comnunities after their own papers folded, although Beatty was
served by the Beatty Bulletin , which was published as a supplement to the
Goldfield News between 1947 and 1956. Consequently, most information on
the history of southcentral Nevada after 1920 is stored in the memories of
individuals who are still living.

Aware of Nye County's close ties to our nation's frontier past, and
recognizing that few written sources on local history are available,
especially after about 1920, the Nye County Commissioners initiated the
Nye County Town History Project (NCIHP) . The NCTHP represents an effort
to systematically collect and preserve information on the history of Nye
County. The centerpiece of the NCTHP is a large set of interviews
conducted with individuals who had knowledge of local history. Each
interview was recorded, transcribed, and then edited lightly to preserve
the language and speech patterns of those interviewed. All oral history
interviews have been printed on acid-free paper and bound and archived in
Nye County libraries, Special Collections in the James R. Dickinson

x

Library at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and at other archival
sites located throughout Nevada. The interviews vary in
length and detail, but together they form a never-before-available
composite picture of each community's life and development. The
collection of interviews for each community can be compared to a bouquet:
Each flower in the bouquet is unique — some are large, others are small —
yet each adds to the total image. In sum, the interviews provide a
composite view of community and county history, revealing the flow of life
and events for a part of Nevada that has heretofore been largely neglected
by historians.

Collection of the oral histories has been accompanied by the
assembling of a set of photographs depicting each community's history.
These pictures have been obtained from participants in the oral history
interviews and other present and past Nye County residents. In all, more
than 700 photos have been collected and carefully identified. Complete
sets of the photographs have been archived along with the oral histories.

On the basis of the oral interviews as well as existing written
sources, histories have been prepared for the major communities in Nye
County. These histories also have been archived.

The town history project is one component of a Nye County program to
determine the socioeconomic impacts of a federal proposal to build and
operate a nuclear waste repository in southcentral Nye County. The
repository, which would be located inside a mountain (Yucca Mountain) ,
would be the nation's first, and possibly only, permanent disposal site
for high-level radioactive waste. The Nye County Board of County
Commissioners initiated the NCIHP in 1987 in order to collect information
on the origin, history, traditions, and quality of life of Nye County

xi

ccmnunities that my be impacted by a repository. If the repository is
constructed, it will reaain a source of interest for hundreds, possibly
thousands, of years to come, and future generations will likely want to
know more about the people who once resided near the site. In the event
that government policy changes and a high-level nuclear waste repository
is not constructed in Nye County/ material compiled by the NdHP will
remain for the use and enjoyment of all.

— R.D.M.

xii

Robert McCracken interviewing Ed Fleming at his home in las Vegas, Nevada
August 2, 1988

CHAPTER ONE

RM: Ed, let's begin by you stating your name as it appears on your birth
certificate.

EF: My name is Edmund lee Fleming.

RM: Where were you born and what is your birthdate?

EF: I was born in Virginia, Minnesota, October 18, 1915.

RM: What was your father's name?

EF: My father was James Hennessey Fleming and my mother was Mary Lenore
Brennan Fleming.

RM: When was your father born and where?

EF: He was born in Ballylanders, which is in Limerick, Ireland, on May 28,
1858.

RM: And when was your mother born?

EF: She was born on June 12th, 1873, on the island of Valentia, Ireland.
RM: So they were both Irish?

EF: Yes, they were. I'm a first generation [American].
RM: What was your father's occupation?

EF: My father did many different things - he was in real estate and he was
the postmaster in our home town. Virginia was in the northern part of the
state and it was about 18,000 or 19,000 at that time. My father was a
judge there and, as I said, the postmaster.
RM: Did you go to school in Virginia?

EF: Yes; through junior college. I finished at St. John's University in
Collegeville, Minnesota.

RM: What were the circumstances that first brought you to Nevada?

EF: My brother from New York had some friends, the Diemels , with whom he

1

lived. They were sent out west because of Mr. Diemel's health and Mr.
Diemel took over this ranch, which was at that time owned by some friends
of the family. He was originally from San Francisco.
RM: Was that the Pahrump Ranch?
EF: Yes.

RM: Who were the owners at that time?

EF: It was a consortium of big wheels on the west coast.

RM: That was the Pahrump Land Company, wasn't it?

EF: [They included Isidore] Dockweiler and Paul Shoup, and there was a Dr.
Shoup among them. Shoup was the President of the Southern Pacific
Railroad.

RM: And, who was Ed Diemel?

EF: He was the friend from New York.

RM: Was he the foreman of the ranch, or did he leave it leased?
EF: It was more or less on a lease basis. He was the scion of a
manufacturing family. His father had invented Diemel linen-mesh underwear
and he was their New York representative at that time. And my brother
lived and worked with them, in New York.
RM: Is your brother older than you?
EF: Oh, yes.

RM: When did Diemel lease the ranch?
EF: It was about 1932.

RM: What were his intentions with the ranch?

EF: They were going for cattle, sheep ranching and alfalfa. I think there
was an experiment with cotton, but it was not too successful. And [they
were going to run it] as a dude ranch. He was primarily interested in the
±»des. When I first went there it was the summer of 1934. I stayed out of

2

school that year and another friend from New York, who was from my home
town, came and picked me up in Virginia and the 4 of vis came out on U.S.
Highway 40.

RM: That must have been an interesting trip at that time.
EF: A very rugged one - we were in a Model -A roadster.
RM: Was Highway 40 paved?

EF: A good part of it was not, especially through the mountains and in

western Colorado and Utah. Vernal, Utah - I remember that one.

RM: Yes; I've been there.

EF : Nowheresville .

RM: How old were you then?

EF: Nineteen. I'd had one year of college.

RM: Did you intend to go out for the summer, or what was your thinking?

EF: Yes; it was only for one year.

RM: Was your brother employed by Diemel?

EF: No. Michael was in advertising. He worked for J. Walter "Ehompson, I

believe. And [later] he was with Macys and Bloomingdales .

RM: How did he know the Diemels - from business contacts, or . . .?

EF: I believe they were in adjacent apartments or something of that sort.

RM: Oh, I see. And who did you ride out with?

EF: His name was Frank Lend. He was also from Virginia and he was about
my brother Michael's age. I rode out with him and his wife and baby
daughter.

RM: So you were all going out to the Pahrump Ranch to check it out?

EF: Yes, that was the idea; and also to work.

RM: And you had gotten knowledge of it through your brother?

EF: Yes. I think Diemel ' s brother-in-law and Michael worked together.

3

KM: How did Diemel hear about it and get interested in it?

EF: Dockweiler and Shoup and so forth were friends of his family in San

Francisco. It was a fairly wealthy family.

RM: He didn't have any experience in ranching or anything, did he?
EF: I presume he had probably grown up working on a ranch - helping out or
duding or something of this sort. He was a graduate of Berkeley and in
business, but it was a matter of his health. He was sent back here because
he had T.B. The doctors did it. As soon as they found out about it, there
were some family strings pulled and that's how he wound up in that
particular place.

RM: How did the dude ranch idea get started? Nevada had just passed its
divorce and gambling laws at that time, hadn't it?

EF: Yes. They figured from the contacts they had made in school and also
in business, that they would attract a lot of wealthy people. As a matter
of fact, when I came there that summer there were 3 or 4 young men about my
age who were working on the ranch and I think the families were paying for
their room and board. And subsequently there were a number of divorcees
who came out.

RM: Did they fix the place up at all for the dude ranching?

EF: The place was not all that run down; it was not bad. The ranch was

beautiful, as a matter of fact. It had all the glamour and the color. The

living arrangements were pretty basic but aside from that, it was

attractive in that it seemed to be attractive to the wealthy people who

came out there, as a contrast to what they were used to.

■*i: Could you describe the beauty of the Pahrump Ranch?

23>: There were huge trees, all open, up and down the lanes. I remember

particularly an immense fig tree that was not far from the cook house. It

4

most have been nearly IOC years old, even at that time. It was probably 6
feet across at the stuxp. I've never seen anything like that particular
tree. And, of course, we had the cottonwcods up and down the lanes and on
a lot of the water lines . Than there were two tremendously big springs
where we swam and so forth; that's where the water came from.
RM: Where did the guests stay?

EF: There were several cottages, separate units, and then everybody ate at
the cookhouse or shack, which was along the lane. It was like one of the
western movie Main Streets - some old buildings, stables and an old saloon
and the store and the schcolhouse. We 3 or 4 boys shacked up in the
bunkhouse, which was along the same street. The owners were in a separate
house. That was where Diemel . . . They had a little girl who has visited
me within the last year or so, incidentally. Her husband is a professor at
Ohio University and she was out here for a PEA conference or something.
RM: What were your first impressions of getting to Pahrump?
EF: That was something else. At that time they were working on the
highway between Las Vegas and Reno and there were stretches that had not
been paved. The paving extended as far as Indian Springs and there were
large crews living at Indian Springs who were working on driving the road
farther north, up to Beatty. After one left Indian Springs on this
terrible road, about 18 or 20 miles farther you turned off to the west and
then you were in the desert for sure.
RM: Was that at the present turnoff ?

a*: Yes. It was about 28 miles from there into the ranch. Entirely a 2-
track desert trail. It was the same way when I returned 4 years later to
teach there.

•&.Z It must have been a dramatic contrast to the environment in northern

5

Minnesota.

EF: It certainly was.

RM: How did it strike you?

EF: I was used to city heat, for instance; we were much more civilized
perhaps than many places in the east. We bought steam heat from the city.
And indoor plumbing was non-existent as far as Pahrump was concerned.
RM: And no electricity?
EF: Oh, no.

RM: What about the climate?

EF: It didn't affect me particularly; I loved it. Of course, I was a 19-
year-old on an adventure. And they kept us busy, working on the ranch,
doing all the things - haying and irrigating and so forth. There were
about 1,000 acres under cultivation so that you were always busy, and there
were the cattle and sheep and pigs. There was always something different
to do. They had a decent library, and it kept us entertained and amused.
RM: What kind of library?
EF: It was just a personal library.

RM: Did you do anything other than read for recreation?
EF: We rode and we explored. We used to take trips. One weekend we went
down to Hoover Dam, which was a-building at that time - it was halfway
finished. Any trip of 100 miles took a full day. We'd go over to Ash
Meadows to swim and so forth and to Shoshone. These are about equal
distance from Pahrump. Death Valley Junction had a movie once a week. We
never got to it, but it was there, waiting for you. The Junction was
beautiful. It was very formal. The people from Pacific Coast Borax, who
bad built a new hotel there (it was only 5 or 10 years old) , were English.
Iz had a very formal dining room and so forth.

6

RM: Was there activity at the clay camps and Ash Meadows then?
EF: Not very much. There was an old man named Martin, I think, who was in
his 80s, at Ash Meadows. He raised black widows and sold the webs as
gunsights .

RM: I heard that they used black widow webs for that.
EF: Yes; they are strong, for one thing.
RM: Did he have a lot of black widows?

EF: There were a slew of them. There were quite a few around anyway, and
he just picked them up. Somebody had put him on to this [as a way] to make
money, and he did. I don't even know how he marketed them, except that he
did send them to some central place.

RM: Were there quite a few Indians in Pahrump at this time?
EF: Yes. There were a number of them who worked on the Ranch. Long Jim -
Jim Steve - and there were a couple others who were more or regular, and
then there were transients. They used to have a powwow once a year, where
they would congregate from all over. They were pretty spread out.
RM: They kind of had their own little village or compound, didn't they?
EF: I don't know. long Jim had his own place up on the mountain. As far
as I know, the family are still there; I think there are a couple of girls
still there. Long Jim and I worked together on the ranch. I was helping
him because he was real moxy about ranch work, putting up fence and this
sort of thing, and it was interesting that 4 years later I had his family
in school, and his oldest daughter worked for my sister for a number of
years after that, here in town.
W.: When did the dude ranch begin?

EF: I don't know if they advertised, or whether it was word of mouth or
•aiether Dockweiler referred people to them, since he was a lawyer. I

7

presume it was through that. I know one of them was the CWl Drug heiress.
I wound up renting a house from her the 2 years that I lived there.
RM: She had a house in Pahrurap?

EF: She was building a honeymoon cottage on about 20 acres a couple of
miles from the Pahrurap Ranch.
RM: Do you remember her name?

EF: Lottie Miller. That was her maiden name, I believe. She married a

dealer here in town seme years after.

RM: Do you remember any other guests from that summer?

EF: Most of them came after my original year there. At the time I was

there, there weren't any. They dreamed [the dude ranch] up after that.

They were very bright people, the Diemels. And I mean if one thing didn't

work, they tried something else. Evidently, they came up with that the

year after I left - about '35.

RM: So it wasn't a dude ranch when you got there - it was a working ranch?
EF: Except for these boys who were working there with me whose families
were paying, yes.

RM: Was it basically so they could have seme ranch experience?

EF: And in the process they were getting some free labor, because they

were not treated any different than anybody else.

RM: Where were they boys from?

EF: From the west coast. One of them was a Shoup, and his father is a
doctor in the Bay Area. Another one's father was a businessman in San
Francisco.

Wtz And you stayed there that summer . . .
2F: Op until December.

3Kz Then you didn't go back for the fall term?

8

EF: No, I picked it up in the spring - I was back hone for the second
semester.

RM: What made you stay on rather than go back in the fall?

EF: I was enjoying it, for one thing, and I was trying to make some money.

This was in the depths of the Depression and we did pick up some extra

money. They were paying me $20 a month, which I didn't collect until the

end. The government came through with one of the New Deal projects - it

was digging wells and putting windmills up throughout the desert area, so I

got on the crew digging the wells and that was $5 a day, which was big

money at that time.

RM: Where all did you dig wells?

EF: All over the valley. We lucked out. It was just surface water and
we'd go down 15 or 20 feet - that's about all - and then erect the windmill
and some stock tubs or vats for water.
RM: How big were the well holes?
EF: About 6 feet across.
RM: Did you timber them?

EF: You cribbed about 8 feet on top, which was . . . well, we were young
and husky.

RM: Whose land were the wells being dug on?

EF: It was mostly federal land.

RM: Why were they digging wells out there?

EF: There were a lot of wild horses around and also it was just to spread
a little money for folks to live on.

RM: Yes. Were they trying to build a road over the Charleston MDuntains
during this period? In the old las Vegas newspapers in the early '30s,
they are talking about w-HirHtw} a road and how they've got to double the

9

crew and I think it was CDC or one of those programs.

EF: Yes; the existing road to Pahrump was originally built by the CCC. We
had what they called a spike camp right up in the saddle.
RM: At Mountain Springs?

EF: Yes. Because later on I was with the forest service during the
summers as a kind of assistant to the ranger and the CCC camp was adjacent
to us, so one of my duties was to make a circle of the mountains once a
month in a pickup. I used to go over that . . .
RM: At Mountain Springs?

EF: It was a fright. On the other side there were desert tracks up until
it nearly met the one from this side. Charlie Robert's ranch was up there
and there was Charlie Williams on the other side - Intermittent Springs,
they called it. Those places still exist, except I think the Intermittent
Springs are almost shut down now. Somebody here in town has a big layout
on the other side of the {fountain Springs, a share deal, for RVs.
RM: Up there where the bar is?
EF: Past that.

RM: Was this also the first summer that you were here?
EF: No, that was later; when I came back to teach.

CHAPTER TWO

RM: And then you went back to Minnesota to finish school?

EF: I was still peripatetic. I think the next summer I went down to

Texas, but I got tired of the winters in Minnesota. They are a fright. As

soon as I got my degree, I headed this way.

RM: And you got a teaching job?

10

EF: Yes.

KM: What made you cane back to Pahrump?

EF: My sister was teaching there in '35; she came the year after I had
left.

RM: Had she learned about it from you?

EF: Well, from my other brother. They were all in contact.
RM: What was her name?

EF: Mary VanCleve. She was married to a mining engineer and Van died
suddenly in the Philippines in '35, so she went back to work.
RM: Was she a schoolteacher by trade?

EF: She had started out as one, and she had a young son. They had lived
in South America for about 12 years and when Van went out to the
Philippines, she was going to go there. Plans had to be changed. So she
taught there for 2 years before I took her place. And she came here to Las
Vegas to teach.

RM: Did you apply for the job?

EF: Yes. And it was word of mouth. Teachers were a little scarce -

finding them for outlying areas at that time. [They'd] have to pay as much

as the cities in order to attract anybody, so it wasn't a question of money

because I theoretically had much better jobs, like Assistant Principal in

Mandan, North Dakota.

RM: What was your salary?

EF: $1,200 for 8 months.

RM: What school district did you work for?

EF: It was Pahrump and Johnnie Mine and Johnnie Town; Johnnie Mine was the
post office for Pahrump. It was called the Rose District.
RM: Pop Buol didn't have a post office there then?

11

EF: Pop carried the nail, but the post office was at Johnnie Mine and

Frank Otto was the postmaster.

RM: How many children were in your class?

EF: I had 13 children.

RM: Were they mostly whites or mostly Indians?

EF: I had four Long Jim children and the other 9 were white. There were a
few transients but not too many. I had the 3 Buol children, one Bell and
few others.

RM: Were they Pop Buol's son's children?

EF: Yes. Frank [Jr.] was leasing the Johnnie Mine at that time, and his
family was living down at Pahrump. On the weekends sometimes through the
school year, if I didn't come to Las Vegas, I would help Frank at Johnnie
Mine.

RM: What was your college degree in?
EF: English and history.

RM: Did they have teaching certificates in those days?

EF: You bet. I had a high school certificate. The summer after I got my
B.A. , I had to go to Superior State Teacher's College to qualify for the
elementary certificate. For a number of years I carried both, but my heart
was with the elementary teaching.
RM: So you started there in 1938?
EF: Yes.

RM: Where did you live?

EF: I rented this honeymoon cottage. By that time she had split up and
had married this other bartender here in Las Vegas. She was lousy rich
anyway. She was not particularly attractive - on the pudgy side.
RM: Where was her place located?

12

EF: It was adjacent to Pop Buol's place. As a natter of fact, I think Pop
probably sold her 20 acres. Right outside my back door there was an
artesian well, pouring constantly into a little pool. I took my bath there
every morning. It was idyllic, shall we say. But she never completed
that; she and Sam broke up and they had just finished 2 rooms. The one was
the kitchen and the other my bedroom. The huge living room, maybe twice
this size, with a fireplace and so forth, was not completed. But they did
have the roof on. Sam was an old cattle, and, strangely, sheep man. He
ran the sheep at Pahrump.

RM: Did they have a lot of sheep on the ranch?

EF: Quite a few, but in 1934, they bought over 1,000 sheep from one of
those islands - the Channel Islands. The government was trying to clear
them out, and they were wild, practically. They trucked them up to
Shoshone and we went to Shoshone to pick them up. It was horrible.
KM: Because they were so wild?

EF: One third of them were killed just in transport, stomping each other.
Then when they got out, they ran in every direction. We got back to the
ranch with only maybe a couple hundred head. It took about 3 days.
RM: By the time you got back in '38, what was happening with the dude
ranch?

EF: Well, by that time Mr. rtigt»i had died. And she . . .

RM: How did he die?

EF: I think of this T.B.

RM: Was he a young man, or middle aged?

EF: I don't think he was 40; aajfce about 40. She moved to Tonopah and all
the [holdings] were brctec ami they optioned the ranch, I believe, to a
man named Van Horn, who was a grower in California.

13

FM: So basically the dude ranch never got off the ground?

EF: Oh, no. Not as an establishment. (It was primarily directed at

divorcees . )

RM: What was happening at the Manse Ranch during this period?
EF: A fellow by the name of Marron had it. They had come up from San
Diego sometime before and he was running a very tight ship, believe me.
That was a very attractive place, and I think he was making money.
RM: Was he Dr. Cornell's son-in-law?

EF: I know that there was some connection. Cornell, I think, was one of

the owners. The Manse was more compact and it was a prettier place.

RM: What was pretty about the Manse Ranch at that time?

EF: I don't know; it was quaint - white fences, white barns and everything

looking very shipshape.

RM: Could you talk a little more about your career as a teacher there for
the 2 years?

EF: Well, the facilities were very basic. I didn't preside in the big
schoolhouse, the one they talk about . . .
RM: The red schoolhouse?

EF: Oh, no. Pop's daughter-in-law Gertie, Frank's wife, was secretary of
the school board and I think Pop was getting as much as he could out of it,
so he rented this building to the Rose School District and that's where I
presided. I was up there several years ago and I think I found it. It was
made out of railroad ties and was rather small - 2 rooms - the 2 rooms were
no bigger than this . . .
RM: Probably 20 by 15 at the most.

EF: Oh, the 15 is elaborate. But there was plenty of room for us.
RM: How far was it from Buol's house?

14

EF: Probably half a mile.

RM: Bat it was on his property?

EF: Yes. There was a well there, with flowing water. We did have running
vjater outside.

RM: Was the so-called red schcolhouse still there?

EF: Oh yes. But it was over on the ranch. Most of the students were not
from the ranch, so . . . the Jim children, of course, were brought down [by
long Jim] .

RM: Were you getting many kids from the Manse Ranch?
EF: There weren't any.

RM: Were there other little farms, or . . .?

EF: Well, there was another farm there. The Randy Bell farm was adjacent

to the big ranch.

RM: Was it a big farm?

EF: He had a fairly good-sized spread.

RM: Did that, later, become the Raycraft place?

EF: I believe it was reversed. It was perhaps originally the Raycraft and
then Bell was operating it.
RM: Who was Randy Bell?

EF: Be was an old ccw man. They had a granddaughter who was one of my
students.

RM: Were there any other places? There was the Manse Ranch, the Pahrump
Ranch, the Bell or Raycraft Ranch, and the Buols. Were there any other
occupancies?
EF: NO.

RM: That was it. Plus the Indians.

EF: Yes. But the Indians mostly stayed on one of the ranches. There were

15

a lot of itinerants.
RM: Workers?

EF: Yes. And some of the people from down . . . the Younts, for instance.

Johnnie Yount used to come up and the Lee brothers were in and out.

RM: Could you say a few words about Johnnie Yount? Did you know him well?

EF: I met him a couple of times, but he was farther down the valley beyond

the Hidden Ranch, and I didn't get around that much. He was well thought

of. And his brother, of course, was involved at Goodsprings.

RM: Right. What was Sam's role in Goodsprings? He was one of the

founders of it, wasn't he?

EF: Not really, but one of the developers. [He was a] heavy in the Yellow
Pine Mining Corporation and he had the company store and later, after
things eased down, he was one of the big stockholders in Security Pacific
National, in Los Angeles; one of the directors.
RM: I didn't know that. Sam made money there?

EF: Oh, yes; lots of money. They took around $13 million dollars out of

the Yellow Pine.

RM: What time period was that?

EF: Around the first World War and shortly after it. After the railroad
went through in 1906.

RM: It sounds like Sam made money, and I have the impression Johnnie Yount
was really dirt-poor.

EF: Johnnie just didn't care about money. I imagine some of this was
sibling rivalry or something of this sort, but I think Sam always helped
him, but tried to keep it down also.
RM: Was Sam older than John?

EF: Yeah. And Johnnie was a squaw man, so . . .

16

RM: Was that held against him?

EF: It was, evidently, by his brother, but nobody else did. I thought it
was interesting that the Lee brothers were half . . . there were many
precedents for this taking of a squaw. The Lees came out here with Fremont,
I believe. The original 5 [Lee] brothers [were] Leander, Philander, Meander
and Salamander. These boys were the sons of Phi Lee, I think.
RM: Yes, and one of them got the Resting Springs.
EF: Cub.

RM: Yes. And then his son was Bob Lee.
EF: Bob was the blacksmith at Pahrump.

RM: Was he a good blacksmith? Did he work at the ranch, or did he
freelance?

EF: He was a good one, and he kind of worked around. There wasn't that
much work for one man at the ranch in those days. Be used to live with Pop
Buol.

RM: Were they pretty good friends?

EF: Yes. I lived with Pop also, because I was almost adjacent to his
grape vineyards and I used to help him make the wine. He was a bonded
winery, you know.

RM: Could you talk about Pop and his winery?

EF: It was bonded winery Number 2 , and it was the only operating winery in

the state at the time, I believe.

RM: What do they mean when they say bonded?

EF: That means it's licensed by the government, and they had an inspection
once a year.

RM: Did he make a lot of wine?

EF: Quite a bit. And he furnished the California Club, which is a club in

17

Los Angeles, with seme of his Zinfandel f I believe.

RM: The California Club was a big, high-faluting . . .

EF: The big money boys. It was Chateau Buol.

RM: Did he have his own label?

EF: Oh yes. I've stuck many of them on.

RM: Was it good wine?

EF: Very good. Because of the desert conditions, it was very high in
alcoholic content. Even though he did not make any fortified wines, his
natural wines were 14 to 16 percent. And he used to hide it all over the
desert.

RM: What would he bury - barrels?

EF: No, just bottles. He had this large room where he also lived and he
only had maybe 1,200 gallon barrels in it; that was about the extent of his
production.

RM: He made the wine inside his living quarters?
EF: Yes.

RM: And it was about a 1,200-gallon-a-year operation?
EF: I don't know how many it would be; I was just guessing.
RM: How would he crush the grapes?
EF: He had a mechanical crusher.

RM: Could you say a little bit about his vineyard? Was it quite

extensive?

EF: Beautiful.

RM: How many acres do yon think it covered?

EF: I don't think he had net oser 10 or 15 acres. It was broken up into

sections for Hi ffaf*** grnpnt

RM: He had a lot of I Ti — ■■ klii ?

IB

EF: Yes. He would try, for instance, to isolate this variety of Muscat or
... in a certain area he might have had 20 acres. But no more than that.
KM: Did the grapes thrive?

EF: Very, very much so. And he was exceptionally good at it. I don't
know his background. Pop was Swiss, I believe, and probably it came down
. . . maybe when he was young he had been exposed to it, although he had
come there from Wisconsin where he was a timber cruiser.
KM: Was he close to his brother in Las Vegas?

EF: Yes, Pete used to come out. By that time Pete was in L.A. He was a
promoter, primarily. He must have moved down there in the '20s. And their
mother lived to be 100-and-something, so Pete was living with the mother,
or she was living with them. He would come up maybe a couple times a year
to visit and of course Pop would go down there.
RM: What made Pop stay on there?

EF: He loved it. He was as black as one of the Paiutes.
RM: From the sun?

EF: He never wore anything but shorts until he came to town. Then he'd
dress up.

RM: Was he a big man physically?

EF: No, probably medium.

RM: I heard that he read a lot.

EF: Very much; he was a reader. I'd usually linger over when I'd help
Pop, when I was teaching out there, and we used to eat together, as I
boarded with Gertie and the 3 little girls. Gertie was his daughter-in-
law.

RM: Pop wasn't married, was he?

EF: No. His wife died when Frank was just a little boy. Pop was always

19

very much interested in the news and so forth. They had a radio. It was a
wind-charger, the first I'd seen.
RM: Did that also run lights?
EF: Just the radio.

RM: Did Pop make a living off his orchards and all?

EF: He picked up money renting the schoolhouse and on the mail run. Once
a week he'd run up and get the mail from the highway and take it to Johnnie
Mine.

RM: Did he have a store at that time?
EF: He had a little store.
RM: Did it amount to much?

EF: No. I do remember one thing. A delicacy which still makes my mouth
water. He would come to Las Vegas and buy a 5-pound round of Roquefort -
the real Roquefort - and we would feast for a long time on that.
RM: Did he keep any cattle or stock or anything at all? Somebody said he
had a pig or 2 and he used to let them eat the fruit that had fallen off
the trees.

EF: I don't know. People traded and this sort of thing. He had a couple
sheep, but I don't think he butchered them or anything, and a milk cow.
RM: Did you know Hughes at all?

EF: I met him a couple of times. I had a couple of his kids, the second
year I was teaching - I think one was in the 8th grade. I believe they
were from Oklahoma, and they were not education-oriented, so we didn't
bother them . . .

RM: People didn't have to send their kids to school there, or did they?
EF: Theoretically they did. The same rules existed then as now.
RM: But in practice, did they?

20

EF: There could be extenuating circumstances. In practice, they did.
Those little Indian girls were there every damn morning.
RM: Were they good students?

EF: They were fair. They had the 2 who made the national headlines years
later for their visions. The twins, Annabelle and Clarabelle Jim.
RM: They saw visions?

EF: Oh yes. They hit the national . . . the A.P.
RM: Religious visions, or . . .?

EF: Yes. Somebody started playing up and it ran for 4 or 5 months. I
think one of them is still out there, and I'm sure the youngest one . . .
somebody was telling me she is quite an activist. Her name was Cynthia.
RM: Oh, I interviewed Cynthia. She didn't mention her sisters and their
visions .

EF: Cynthia was an awfully cute little first-grader when I had her. She
was about 6. These twins were older; 12 at the time.

CHAPTER THREE

EF: It was just one of those things you just didn't think about.
Occasionally some of the Indians would get a hold of some . . . they'd find
some of that dune wine and go on a little spree. I recall once we were in
the bunkhouse in '34, and they started shooting up the place. I still have
a little scar from a piece of sharp glass that sliced me.
RM: A scar on the elbow of your left arm.

EF: They shot the windows out of the bunkhouse, that particular time.
RM: They had just been drinking?

EF: Yes. They were angry about something; I've no idea what it was.

21

RM: Did people carry guns and everything then?

EF: Everybody had a piece, a rifle for poaching or whatever, because a lot

of poaching went on up there - mainly deer and sheep.

RM: There were quite a few sheep then?

EF: The sheep would be over here in the sheep mountains.

RM: The Nopahs?

EF: The sheep mountains behind Indian Springs.
RM: Qh, they'd come clear over there to poach.

EF: Yes. I remember George Ishmael used to be real good at that. He was
kind of the foreman at the ranch for Diemel.

RM: Then you worked under George Ishmael? Could you talk a little bit
about him?

EF: Oh yes. I just loved him. He was a big, husky tough guy, really -
one of the toughest men I ever met or saw. It was a big family affair.
His mother-in-law was the cook on the ranch and his family was living
there. George was a man "for all seasons"; a little bit of everything. He
was the head butcher, head hunter and so forth, and the head honcho on
anything to do with the ranch. Diemel ' s wife's maiden name was Hatch, and
she came from out of Berkeley also and her brother was there on the ranch.
He was supposed to be head irrigator. His name was Worth. He was a very
tall, beautiful-looking man.
RM: What was Ishmael 's mother-in-law's name?
EF: Mrs. Carpenter.

RM: And Ishmael had his wife and children there?

EF: Yes. He had 4 or 5, a boy and ... I think the boy is still around
Teccpa.

RM: I interviewed his daughter Phyllis Bell in Beatty.

22

EF: Yes, he had 2 very attractive . . . well, they ware younger than I.
RM: Then you left the Pahrump Valley and went down to Qoodsprings?
EF: I staved a year at Qoodsprings and then went to Nelson.
RM: Was Nelson a bocming town?

EF: It was a booming town at that time. They were building the road both
from the highway and from Nelson down to the river, so we had all the
construction workers. I had about 45 kids in one room.
RM: Is that right?

EF: That was a real bad pick, that I did in that case.
RM: You mean because of such a high number?

EF: Five grades there at the end. The lady who was teaching with me was

sickly so I assumed some of her classes.

RM: By then the war was going, wasn't it?

EF: The war started on December the 7th of that year.

RM: When you were at Nelson?

EF: Yes. I had got married the month before.

RM: And you married a girl from Qoodsprings?

EF: Yes.

RM: Was her father . . .

EF: He was a storekeeper and Schwartz was his name. He had the store

there and they operated several mines also. He was one of the original

ones on the big gold mine there.

RM: What was the name of that mine?

EF: I think it was Chiguita; later, the Barefoot.

RM: Were you in Gcodsprings when the Lombard plane went down in January of
'42?

EF: In '42 I was in Henderson. I moved around quite a bit. Was this

23

right after Pearl Harbor?
RM: Yes.

EF: Well, we were over there visiting, anyway, when she went down.
Because Jane's uncle over here, and several of the others, were the first
people up at the site.
RM: You mean your wife's uncle?

EF: Yes; the one in the picture here. Her father had mined up there - the
Copper Peak was the mine - and it was the closest thing to where the plane
crashed. They still owned it at that time, and used to go up there quite
often.

RM: Exactly where on the mountain did the plane go down?

EF: Well, it's up on Potosi. From Goodsprings you can just about see

where it is, and it's up in the very rugged terrain.

RM: Right near the top?

EF: Yes. That was one of the reasons it crashed, I believed. He had just
underestimated . . . his maps were haywire. Very little was said about the
25 pilots he had aboard.
RM: Isn't that something. Yes.

Where were you teaching in 1942?
EF: I had a contract to teach high school in Boulder City and I called
Elbert Edwards on the last day and resigned and I went to work for Basic
Magnesium.

RM: What did you do for Basic?

EF: I started with a shovel but I wound up as a foreman in production. We
were there from the first shovelful until they closed it. We lived on
Water Street in Henderson i u nti l '45.
RM: That was an incredible project , wasn't it?

24

EF: It was.

RM: The speed with which they completed it and the number of men they had

working there and . . .

EF: There were over 10,000.

RM: The growth it produced in the community is almost unbelievable by
today's terms.

EF: When I came to Vegas there was only [a population of] about 8,000. It
was a little burg as far as I was concerned, coming from the east. From
10,000 to 60,000.

RM: What made you switch from teaching to Basic Magnesium?

EF: More money. My contract was something like $1,700 and I made about

$4,000 the first year, then $6,000 and $7,000, which was fantastic wages

for that time. That was more than the superintendent [of schools] was

making, so that was actually the reason.

RM: After Basic Magnesium shut down, what did you do?

EF: I spent about a year and a half in the arms of the U.S. Army.

RM: You'd been exempt because you were in an essential industry before

that?

EF: That was part of it; also I was 4-F.
RM: Did you get drafted?

EF: Oh yes. They were into the bottom of the barrel by that time. I went
gladly. I had a job offered to me. I worked for Fred Gibson, you probably
have heard of him - he was the cob who started Pacific Engineering. This
was the older Fred and he was also looking for a job, so I went to Salem,
Oregon. They were building an alanm plant, and I was to scout the place
out and also be a foreman -hrrr> . I spent about 4 days in Salem and that
was enough for me.

25

RM: You didn't like it?

EF: Oh, my God. It never stopped raining. I came back and reported that
out and then very gladly went into the service.
RM: What did you do after the service?

EF: I knocked around. I worked in the mines at Goodsprings and did some
fruit harvesting up in northern California and some real estate appraisal
in California. Then I came back and I worked about a half a year, I guess,
on the Argentine Mine at Goodsprings - that's lead and zinc. Then I went
back into teaching and I stayed with it.
RM: When did you enter teaching again?
EF: 1947.

RM: And you stayed with it until you retired?

EF: I retired in 1978; I had 35 years all told. I was Audio-Visual
Supervisor for Clark County for about 12 years.

RM: Do you remember any interesting anecdotes or stories of Pahrump?
EF: Well, there were always characters around. For instance, one summer
after school was out, Pop hired me to help him and people were getting
interested in Pahrump at the time. Lois Kellogg came down and was very
much interested. Pop was also a surveyor, which went with the timber
cruising as his background, and we surveyed across the brow of the hills
above Pahrump, which was quite an area of rugged terrain, finding the
benchmarks and so forth. She bought up quite a bit of land in the valley.
She didn't touch the main ranch, of course; by that time, she was pretty
well settled in there. She had a big ranch up in Fish Lake Valley. As a
matter of fact, that's where she was living. She died a couple of years
later in Los Angeles.
RM: Oh, she didn't die in Pahrump?

26

EF: No. She died of tularemia.

RM: Did she contract it in Pahrump or up at Fish Late?

EF: Fish Late, as far as I know. I think she died in Los Angeles. They

rushed her down there. She was an heiress of the Kellogg Telephone

Company in Chicago, and filthy rich. I remember she hired this drilling

outfit, one of the biggest ones in the world, out of Los Angeles to cone

up. They were the only ones with this kind of equipment and my God, it

left holes . . .

RM: The drill was 16 inches?

EF: Something like that. They punched that thing down and the water just

shot up. We all went down because they said they were going to uncap it or

open it up and clean it out.

RM: How high did it go?

EF: Oh, hell, 50 feet.

RM: It didn't stay there, did it?

EF: Well, they shut it down to save it. It was a hell of a big hole; I

don't remember just how big.

RM: Did you know Lois Kellogg at all?

EF: Oh yes.

RM: Could you discuss her?

EF: She was very much a tomboy. She would go along . . . she would be up
in the trees. She was a little waggly.
RM: By waggly you mean . . .

EF: Oh, eccentric. She had a lot of money; she could be eccentric. She
was nuts about Russian Wolfhounds. She always had a couple with her when
she came down here. She had about 80 of them at Fish Late.
RM: Were you ever up there?

27

EF: Just once. I don't recall too much about it. But they used them up

there to run down the coyotes. She had a couple that were real pets. She

always ate with us at Gertie's in Pahrurnp, and those big heads would be

hanging over the table watching every move we made.

RM: So she didn't do her own cooking when she was in Pahrurnp?

EF: Oh no. Not that I know of. I don't think she ever did her own

cooking.

RM: Why did she want a ranch at Pahrurnp?

EF: She just liked them.

RM: And she already had one at Fish Lake?

EF: It's probably just inborn acquisitiveness.

RM: How old a woman was she, would you say?

EF: She was in her early 40s.

RM: Was she pretty?

EF: Yes, she was attractive.

RM: Was she a small woman or a big woman?

EF: She was probably medium, but rangy and, as I say, very much a tomboy,
running around and doing a lot of riding. When I first went to Pahrurnp
there were a lot of wild horses . There are none any more, but at that time
there were a lot of wild horses running around. I noticed that they are
transplanting seme of the sheep from the river up to those particular
mountains where we had to drive the sheep from Shoshone.
RM: The Nopahs, I think they call them. Yes.

EF: We called it Chicago Valley, and New York Valley, adjacent to the
Pahrurnp Valley. But we lost a lot of sheep at that time. I often wondered
whether any of them survived. It was up in those same hills. I didn't
know that there was any water up there.

28

KM: You are talking about when you put the wild sheep from the Channel
Islands up there. Can you think of anything else about Lois Kellogg that
might be worth noting?

EF: No. She used to take one or two of the Buol girls down to L.A. with
her just to get a vacation, and she'd always had the Presidential Suite.
She was lousy rich.

RM: Her ranches didn't have to pay, then?

EF: Oh no. Certainly . . . with 80 Wolfhounds.

RM: Was she selling the dogs?

EF: No. She just kept them. She liked them.

RM: She wasn't there very long, was she?

EF: No.

RM: Tim Hafen, when he bought the old Kellogg Ranch from Bowman, said that

he found a set of plans in an old building that was signed by F.L. Wright,

from Los Angeles. They have since been lost, but he was wondering if Frank

Lloyd Wright might have actually designed the building.

EF: F. L. Wright could have known the Kellogg family in Chicago. He did

much of his work out there.

RM: The Kelloggs were from Chicago?

EF: Oh yes. In the good old days, half of the telephones in this county
were Kellogg Company phones.

RM: There's no relationship to the Kellogg cereals?

EF: No. This was an entirely separate family, very affluent. It was a
monopoly practically - telephone receivers and handsets.
RM: Their fortune kind of went into eclipse, didn't it? Now, you just
never heard of it.

EF: No. I've no idea what her-^e* of hers, for instance.

29

RM: Can you think of any other characters, instances or anecdotes
concerning Pahrump that . . .

EF: Well, there was a good, old guy, Pete I think his name was, who lived
at Johnnie Town and he was just damned to stay there. No one was in there
for 60 years, just an old miner and he finally died. Nothing I recall
particularly.

RM: Any murders or anything relating to this kind of law beyond the pale?
EF: Yes. In the first year I was there . . . Van Horn had married this
woman, named Sally Cayton, I believe. (Van Horn had the Pahrump Ranch
before Hughes did.) Sally Cayton brought relatives from Texas. One of
them was Paul Cayton, her son. Incidentally, years later, he bought the
Goodsprings Hotel that burned. He was a dipso; anyway, that's the theory -
that he got drunk and burned the hotel down around himself. But Cayton and
his cousin were 2 raw characters. The cousin had a very attractive wife,
Johnnie, and a little boy, and of course the little boy came to school.
Pawford Brooks was the father's name and Pawford got it into his knuckle
head that I was tampering with his Johnnie. [One] particular weekend he
got liquored up and I had taken off ... On the weekends, if I didn't come
to Vegas or go up to Johnnie Mine, I'd just go exploring on the desert, and
I had gone to Death Valley, I believe, that day. He came looking for me
with his shotgun. Fortunately I eluded him without knowing that he was
hunting for me. That was as close as I ever came. Because there is no
recourse . . . you can't report it to the authorities.
RM: Were you very concerned rfvtt he might get activated again?
EF: Not really, because rhprr* woe no basis at all for it. It was this
other conniver that was feeding him all this crap, I presume.
RM: And his wife was Darned liniii ~

30

EF: Yes. And she was on the school board. In small ccranunities like
that, the latest arrival always gets a place on the school board because
nobody else wants it. They are just looking for fresh meat all the time.

CHAPTER POUR

RM: I'm fascinated by the whole thing of frontier law and justice in the

area even well into the '30s.

EF: They were pretty well self -regulating.

RM: Was there a deputy sheriff there then?

EF: No. (There was only one deputy in the county. ) All the law was in
Tonopah, 150 miles away. There were a lot of informal ones like Tim
Harnedy at Indian Springs - volunteers - but no law. I don't know,
everybody seemed to get along all right without it. As I said, there was
no recourse.

RM: And both whites and Indians were involved in this kind of thing?
EF: Yes.

RM: Can you think of anything else that might be worth noting here?

EF: I remember that Gertie's father lived in Sandy Valley. This was about

40 miles from Pahrump and every once in awhile, he and some of his drinking

companions set out from Sandy Valley for Pahrump to visit Pop Buol and try

to talk him out of a couple of bottles. Sometimes they would arrive with

no tires on the wheels; Qod knows how they got there . . .

RM: No tires?

EF: No. They had all bloHD. out on the way and they were so potted they
didn't know it. They were just, hring one hell of a good time.
RM: Did Pop sell his wine locally?

n

EF: Oh, yes. That sometimes was a problem, I guess. There weren't
concentrations of Indians . . . nobody paid too much attention. He had a
ready market for anything that he made, but as I say, it was very limited.
RM: How long did he age it?

EF: Sometimes in those dunes, I imagine it was 4 or 5 years. Some of them
are still aging I am sure. I went out a couple of years ago when my
brother-in-law and sister-in-law were thinking of buying a place up there.
It was kind of nostalgic and I had an awful time . . . frankly, I couldn't
even find Pop's place. I know that it's in the area of the University
Extension Farm and Benny Binion's place, but Pop Buol . . .
RM: It doesn't look the same at all?

EF: It doesn't. There's a little bar that looks like the schoolhouse -

that was the schoolhouse. It's made of railroad ties.

RM: Is that the Cotton Pickin' Saloon?

EF: I think that may be the name.

RM: That may have been the schoolhouse?

EF: Yes.

RM: I'll be darned. I think it is made of ties.

EF: Ties were the construction material of choice. This place that I
rented from Lottie was constructed of ties, either from the Las Vegas and
Tonopah Railroad or the TVT . . . Deke's railroad. Deke [Lowe] was the
telegrapher and the station. Master at Shoshone on the T&T, like his father
before him, and Celesta [Lowe] was in the offing there. Her uncle [Charlie
Brown] had the big score in Shoshone and we used to trade there. As a
matter of fact, when they gave k check at Pahrump, I hurried fast to
Charlie's place to cash it, rrar a ■oney order, and get out of town.
RM: How did the Rose School Dtscract pay? Was each farmer there taxed?

12

EF: There were sate taxes that went into the state distributive fund -
that's where all the money came from.
KM: It wasn't raised locally?

EF: No. That's why when it experienced such wild growth out there, they
didn't have any money to build a school. And they got this windfall which
was from the county.

33

alfalfa, 2
Argentine Mine, 26
artesian wells, 13, 27
Ash Meadows, NV, 6-7
audio-visual work, 26
Ballylanders, Ireland, 1
Barefoot Mine, 23
Basic Magnesium Co., 24-25
Beatty, NV, 5, 22
Bell, Phyllis, 22
Bell child, 12
Randy Bell farm, 15
Binion place, 32
black widow spiders, 7
blacksmith, 17
Bloomingdale's, 3
Boulder City, NV, 24
Brooks, Johnnie, 30-31
Brooks, Pawford, 30
Brown, Senator Charlie, 32
bunkhouse, 5

Buol, Frank "Pop", 11, 12, 14,

17-20, 26, 31-32
Buol, Frank (Jr.), 12
Buol, Gertie, 14, 19
Buol, Pete, 19
Buol children, 12
California Club, 17-18
Carpenter, Mrs., 22
cattle, 2, 6, 13, 20
Cayton, Paul and Sally, 30
Channel Islands, 13, 29
Charleston Mountains, 9
Chateau Buol Wine, 18
Chicago, IL, 27, 29
Chicago Valley, 28
Chiquita Mine, 23
Civilian Conservation Corp . , 10
Clark County, 26
clay camps, 7
Collegeville, MN, 1
community growth, 25
Copper Peak Mine, 24
Cornell, Dr. Harold D. , 14
cotton, 2

Cotton Pickin' Saloon, 32

cottonwood trees, 5

coyotes, 28

Death Valley, 30

Death Valley Junction, CA, 6

deer, 22

Depression, 9

deputy sheriff, 31
Diemel family, 1-5, 8, 13, 22
Diemel linen-nesh underwear, 2
divorce law, 4, 14
Dockweiler, Isidore, 2, 4, 7
dude ranch, 2, 4, 7, 14
Edwards, Elbert, 24
fig tree, 4

Fish Lake Valley, NV, 26-28
Fleming, James Hermes sy, 1
Fleming, Mary Lenore Brennan, 1
Fleming, Michael, 3
frontier law and justice, 31
Gibson, Fred, 25
gold mine, 23

Goodsprings, NV, 16, 23, 26
Hafen, Tim, 29
Harnedy, Tim, 31
Hatch family, 22
haying, 6

Henderson, NV, 23-24

Hidden Ranch, 16

honeymoon cottage, 8, 12

Hoover Dam, 6

Hughes, Mr., 20

Indian Springs, NV, 5, 22, 31

Indians, 7, 15, 21, 31-32

Intermittent Springs, 10

irrigating, 6, 22

Ishmael, George, 22

Jim, Anabelle, 21

Jim, Clara, 21

Jim, Cynthia, 21

Jim, Long, 7, 15

Jim children, 7, 12, 15

Johnnie Mine, 11, 12, 20, 30

Johnnie Town, 11, 30

Kellogg, Lois, 26-29

Kellogg Ranch, 29

Kellogg Telephone Co., 27, 29

Las Vegas, NV, 5, 12, 25

lead, 26

Lee, Bob, 17

Lee, Cub, 17

Lee, Leander, 17

Lee, Meander, 17

Lee, Philander, 17

Lee, Salamander, 17

Lee brothers, 16, 17

Lend, Frank, 3

library, 6

Limerick, Ireland, 1

34

LoBbard plane crash, 23-24

Los Angeles, CA, 16

Lome, Deke and Celesta, 32

Hht^ s f 3

Syrian, ND, 11

Saose Ranch, 14-15

Jterrcr., Mr., 14

3fe - * i ri f Mr. , 7

Miller, Lottie, 8, 32

UDdel-A roadster, 3

jfcunM i n Springs, 10

Muscat (grape), 19

Nelson, NV, 23

New Deal, 9

New York, NY, 2, 3

New York Valley, 28

Nopah Mountains, 22, 28

Oklahoma, 20

Otto, Frank, 12

Owl Drug heiress, 8

Pacific Coast Borax, 6

Pacific Engineering, 25

Pahrurap area environment, 5-6

Pahrump Land Co. , 2

Pahrump Ranch, 2-4, 8, 15

Pahrump Valley, NV, 6, 9-11, 13

17, 23, 26-28, 31
Paiute Indians, 19
Philippines, 11
pigs, 6
poaching, 22
Potosi Mountain, 24
radio, 20
railroad ties, 32
Raycraft farm, 15
Reno, NV, 5
Resting Springs, 17
roads, 5

Charlie Robert's ranch, 10

Roquefort cheese, 20

Rose School District, 11, 14, 32

Russian wolfhounds, 27, 29

St. John's University, 1

Salem, OR, 25

San Diego, CA, 14

San Francisco, CA, 2, 4, 8

Sandy Valley, NV, 31

Schwartz, Mr., 23

Security Pacific National, 16

sheep, 2, 6, 13, 20, 22, 28-29

Shoshone, CA, 6, 13, 28, 32

Shoup, Paul, 2, 4, 8

South America, 11
Southern Pacific Railroad, 2
"squaw man, " 16-17
state distributive fund, 33
Steve, Jim, 7, 15
Superior State Teachers' College,
12

surveying, 26
T&T Railroad, 32
taxes, 33

teaching, 10-12, 14, 20, 23,

24, 26
Tecopa, CA, 22
Texas, 10

Thompson, J. Walter (Ad Agency) , 3
Tonopah, NV, 13, 31
tuberculosis, 4, 13
tularemia, 27
U.S. Army, 25-26
U.S. Government land, 9
U.S. Forest Service, 10
University of Calif., Berkeley,
4, 22

University Extension Farm, 32

Valentia, Ireland, 1

Van Cleve, Mary, 11

Van Horn, Mr. , 13, 30

Virginia, MN, 1

visions (religious), 21

wells, 9, 15, 27

wild horses, 9, 28

Williams, Charlie, 10

windmills, 9

wine, 17-19, 21, 31-32

Wisconsin, 19

working ranches, 8

World War I, 16

Worth, Mr., 22

Wright, F. L., 29

Yellow Pine Mining Corp. , 16

Yount, Johnnie, 16

Yount, Sam, 16

zinc, 26

Zinfandel, 18

35