An Interview with

Albert N. Bradshaw

An Oral History conducted and edited by

Robert D. McCracken

Nye County Town History Project

Nye County, Nevada

Tonopah

1987

COPYRIGHT 1990

Nye County Town History Project

Nye County Commissioners

Tonopah, Nevada

89049

Albert N. Bradshaw

1987

INDEX

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE

The elder Bradshaw's youth in California; Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw meet and marry; Mrs. Bradshaw's memories of the San Francisco earthquake; the Enright family; Nevada characters; from Sodaville to Goldfield; the Depression - hard times; lost boys.

CHAPTER TWO

Bitter winters in Goldfield; mining promotion; leasing.

CHAPTER THREE

Work as a section hand and leasing on the side; marriage; work at a mill; moving to Tonopah; running the Union Oil bulk plant; construction at the Tonopah Army Air Base.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Mobil bulk plant; early work with Cavanaugh Brothers; E. L. Cord; retirement and prospecting; mining in Round Mountain and Goldfield - then and now; making money in Goldfield as a youth; Tonopah's red light district; credit in the grocery stores.

CHAPTER FIVE

Great-grandmother Fermina Serrias, "The Copper Queen of Nevada"; other women prospectors; caches of gold; a golf-club factory; atomic bomb tests; the United Cattle and Packing Company - their spread and their slaughterhouse.

CHAPTER SIX

Black Karakul sheep and birth control; leases.

Index

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, 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.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As project director, I would like to express my 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 from so many wonderful individuals. I was welcomed into many hares—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 Mt. 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 Mt. 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 became 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. Maire 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-FG08-89NV10820 . 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

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, cam unities established, and roads and railroads constructed. The mining 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 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 communities received only spotty coverage in the newspapers of other communities 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 (NCTHP). 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 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 NCTBP in 1987 in order to collect information on the origin, history, traditions, and quality of life of Nye County communities that may be impacted by a repository. If the repository is constructed, it will remain 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 NCTHP will remain for the use and enjoyment of all.

--R.D.M.

Robert McCracken interviewing Al Bradshaw at his home in Tonopah, Nevada October 20 and December 7, 1987.

CHAPTER ONE

RM: Al, could you tell me your full name and the date and place of your birth?

AB: My full name is Albert Nicholas Bradshaw, Jr. I should be the Senior, but I never picked it up; it was easier to write Jr. But I have 2 sons here - one is my namesake, and he has a son of the same name. I was born in Richmond, California. They called it Point Richmond then, my mother told. me.

RM: Where is Richmond?

AB: In the Bay area. The date was October 1, 1914. And at that time my father was in the mining business. He was a mining engineer and he had graduated from Occidental College in California - which is still there, I believe.

RM: Yes, I've heard of it.

AB: He played football. He came from the south - he was born on June 1, 1878 in Harwood Dallas, in Dallas County in the state of Texas. This is enumerated in The Family of A.N. Bradshaw and Sarah T. Bradshaw. The information comes from the Census of 1880. My father's family ended up in Coronado Beach - San Diego - in the early 1900s.

RM: That must've been a fabulous place. [chuckles]

AB: Yes. He talked about going down to Coronado beach there and catching large fish. He was a little boy, and he said he'd drag them through the sand, and their tails would be dragging on the ground. There were lots of doves in the country, and he said he used to conserve his shells by getting a shot at the doves when they crossed, and he'd maybe get 2 instead of one.

He had a brother there, George Brown Bradshaw, who was a rear admiral in the navy. I only saw the man once. He lived on Busch Street and he was a very fine gentleman. He had mementos from all over the world that he'd picked up on his trips. He was a good, common guy.

Anyhow, my dad went to Occidental College, as I said, and then he got into mining - he was a mining engineer. And I guess he followed the boom towns. The boom area then was Luning-Mina-Candelaria.

RM: When was this?

AB: In the early 1900s. He came to the Luning area and located claims. know he leased at Candelaria, and shipped ore from there. That was probably after the big splurge, you know . . .

RM: Yes, the big one at Candelaria

AB: But that's where he met my mother - at Sodaville. In the early days of Tonopah, Sodaville was the end of the railroad, and they had immense sources and supplies of drayage animals. At one time they had over 1,000 drayage animals there at Sodaville. They would haul everything into Tonopah, before the railroad was built. The hoists, the timbers, booze, food, everything. You know, we didn't even have wood here. My dad worked out of there, and located claims, and sold them, and that's where he met my mother.

She was quite a bit younger than he was, I think about 18 years, which was not unusual then. And he was making money, so whenever one of us children was about to be born he'd send my mother to some nice place, like Point Richmond, California. She was at Reno when my next brother, Francis, was born. But as the others came along, he didn't have the money to do that.

RM: were you the oldest?

AB: I was the oldest of 5 children. One brother was with the bank - he's 14 months younger. And then a sister - she's passed away, now. And then I have another sister in Phoenix, Arizona, and a younger brother in California.

RM: What was your mother's name, and where did her folks came from?

AB: Her name was Marguerite C. Enright. But she was Hispanic and a good-looking young woman.

RM: Did she marry young?

AB: I was born when she was 16. But my dad was a pretty good dude. He was a good dresser and a flashy guy, and all that stuff, when he wanted to be. And he could be a mucker, too.

I think my mother's folks came from California. She was in the San Francisco earthquake and fire - she used to tell about it. She was just a little girl, maybe 6 years old, and she told about how they enforced the martial law; if they'd catch somebody cutting off a finger to get a ring, they'd shoot them right there on the spot. She says she remembers walking over the hills, with what personal belongings they could, to Oakland, to get out of the fire. It was just a terrible, terrible thing. I don't know how she got to the Mina-Luning area.

If I'd had a tape - which I could have before she passed away - and had her tell me these stories . . . But you know how that goes. Unless Bob McCracken does it - am I going to do it?

RM: Hey, I haven't done it on my family.

AB: See? There you go. I didn't know the Enrights too well, but she had 2 brothers, Tom and Bill Enright. Tom Enright went to Las Vegas from this area, I guess, in the early days of Las Vegas, when the Union Station was just a 10 x 10 building. I've got a picture of him, standing there. He stayed in Las Vegas and got into the city as a gambler. He was tied up in some of the first joints that were there, and he stayed there until the time he died.

The other brother - Bill Enright - hung around the Mina area after the family came from San Francisco. But I guess Bill Enright was kind of the devil of the family. The other brother, Tom, was a pretty good guy, but Bill was the mischievous brother. My-mother said one time in Chinatown she remembered that Bill and some other boys got together and chopped off a Chinaman's queue. Well, you might as well chop off his head. Terrible thing to do! So they were going to fix him - whatever they do - and he got so scared that he jumped a freighter and went on a trip to Mexico. But he ended up in the Mina area and for awhile he took the mail route to Candelaria. I guess this was after the boar.

But she told of living in Luning and Mina. And mining camps, in those days, were a poor place to live. And my dad told about mining copper ore in New York Canyon, which is out of Luning, during World. War I. And he said they chlorided it, which means they took it out clean, and he said it ran 47 percent copper.

They used to have a fellow, a renegade cattle wrestler, horse wrangler, you name it - little bit of a guy - tougher than Billy-be-darned. He lived up there in the hills, and if he needed beef, he went and got it. His name was Dick Barnes. I can remember the little fellow; I wasn't very old, only about 4 or 5 years old. He and his gang used to haul the ore down in wagons for my dad. And whenever they'd get a little flush, and get full of that barleycorn, I can remember them coming down the street there in Luning on their horses, going full bore, shooting pistols in the air Just like 'way, 'way back. I don't kwon where the cops were. I guess there wasn't one, and the sheriff might've been in Hawthorne or Luning or even in Mina. (We're speaking about Mineral County, now.) But I can remember that. From Luning we moved to Mina.

RM: Bow old were you then?

AB: Seven.

RM: How would you describe Luning?

AB: Oh, I'd say that during the boar times there might've been 400 people there. But as I remember it, it was just scattered with houses. In the interim between the time we moved - some place in there - if I'm not mistaken, my dad and a partner by the name of Bert Walsh were in the mining business together, and they located a property out of Mina. If I'm not mistaken, it's Camp Douglas, which is there now. They had a chance to sell their claims for $80,000 cash. And we were poor. That's one thing I can remember in my life: being poor, and not having. And his partner would not sell. He said, "Why, if they give us $80,000 cash, they'll give us $100,000." So you know what they wound up with - that big zero.

RM: Yes, right. All or nothing.

AB: Well, it'd break a man's heart, wouldn't it? He's got 5 kids, and probably owes the grocery man and so on down the line. And my dad told. me, "That's the last time I ever had a partner." He said, "No more." You probably know, in your life, that the same thing has happened. Your partner gets a little bit greedy, and you wind up with nothing. It's happened here many times.

Well, then we moved to Mina. And somewhere along the line we got into Sodaville. Sodaville was, as I say, the end of the stop for the railroad, and that's where they brought everything into Tonopah - on teams. They followed the course of the water. They went from Sodaville up to Summit Springs, which was a gradual pull, then dropped down to Crow Springs, and then maybe to Rodger's Well and then up to Frazier's Well, and into Tonopah.

RM: Yes. But by this time the railroad `„was in, wasn't it?

AB: Well, I was speaking before the railroad, in the early days. And Sodaville was a pretty good little camp. There's water there and there was a nice hotel and boarding house. There was also a swimming pool - people could go there and relax and have a little party or whatever. I'm pretty sure we lived at Sodaville when my father mined at Candelaria. I don't recall too much about what he did in Mina or in that area - I suppose it was in the mining business. But the kids were starting to multiply a little bit, and things weren't booming . . . For example, he told me that when he was making money, he'd spend money. That time of the Johnson Jeffries fight in Reno, he went up there and spent a lot of money - maybe $1,000 or $2,000 - on a big bash!

RM: That was a lot of money, wasn't it?

AB: A lot of money. You take 22 times that today . .

RM: Yes. Is that what it would be - 22? [laughs]

AB: Well, the price of gold . . . if you relate it that way. But things were never that good afterwards, you see. And he was getting older. From Mina we moved to Goldfield in the latter part of '23 or '24.

RM: What made him go to Goldfield, I wonder?

AB: He evidently had a job to go to or something; there was nothing in Luning or Mina.

RM: Goldfield was in its decline, wasn't it?

AB: That was in the decline. Sure. That was practically the start of the Depression. The big Depression really took off in '29, but things were slowing up, you know. And there were still quite a few kids in school. He got a job, and I can only remember him working out at Cuprite, which is south of Goldfield. He and a fellow by the name of Coyote Bill were mining there, and they were shipping silica ore - it was high in silica. The railroad went right through Cuprite. They had a water tower there and everything. There were about 5 railroads in the area, and [I think the one that went through Cuprite was] the Tonopah and Tidewater. I don't know where they shipped it, but that's what he did at Cuprite.

RM: Cuprite is south of Goldfield?

AB: Just south - say, 8, 9 miles - just before you get to the Lida turnoff on the left. You go around that point, and there are mines in there.

RM: Was he working as an engineer, or . . .?

AB: No. By that time, he was ready to take anything. He had 7 mouths to feed.

RM: Was he a big man?

AB: No, he was small; we were all small. Times in Goldfield were tough. Whenever he was working and he had the money, we had a fairly decent place to live; maybe it had running water and a bath. But if we couldn't pay the rent, we got tossed out. We lived right up there by the Sundog School, which at that time was not in operation. It was a block building there on the street going south to Las Vegas. It's dismantled now - the State Highway took it down and took all the block away. It had all come out of the rock in the area. [Our house] right in front of the Sundog School ¬that would be to the north - was a great big old house. Hardwood floors, and columns between the dining roan and the living roan, and all kinds of roams in there. You could hardly heat one roam. But we stayed there for awhile, and that's when all the kids - the whole bunch of us - got scarlet fever. They'd quarantine you, in those days. They put a lock on the house, and that was it. Nobody'd care in and out, though they'd let the breadwinner go out, but he had to stay out.

RM: When was this?

AB: I'd say about 1925. And it seemed like we couldn't all get them together. One would get then, and then you'd peel off - as you do, if anybody you know has ever had scarlet fever . . .

RM: I've never seen anybody who had it.

AB: It's a fever, period; a dandy. You get out of your head - you're just sick. And when you start to healing up, you scale off. I can remember my nother taking newspapers and putting them under us kids, and we'd take our clothes off and there'd be a pile of scales on the newspaper.

RM: Was the whole town affected?

AB: It was an epidemic. One time we had a diphtheria epidemic, and it was bad; sate people died. And then they got a bum batch of serum and some of then darn near lost their legs.

And while we were there my younger brother Francis and the youngest brother, George, who were always playing - you know how kids do, they play with one another, and they get ideas in their heads - they were playing with the Curless boys, who lived next to us. And they decided to take a hike up toward the summit, going south. Well, they got up there and the Curless boys said, "Well, we're going to go home," and they left these 2 little tykes up there. The Curless boys got home all right, and my 2 brothers didn't. So they were lost. And they evidently got over those mountains and got behind the summit, so they couldn't see the lights of Goldfield. And it was cold - down to freezing. And they were afraid the kids would freeze to death. They did everything that they had available in those days: mostly manpower. They'd build fires on the mountains and stuff like that. The kids later on said, "Well, we thought those were shooting stars." And the coyotes started to hollering and they got scared. So the older boy put the little guy up in the Joshua tree above him, and he climbed up also. And I guess they were found the next morning. They were gone practically all one day and night. And the fire chief, a fellow by the name of Ike Guyac, found them. There were big headlines in the local paper: The Two Missing Boys Found.

But then we had to move out of there, and we moved out to Ramsey Street; that was to the north.

RM: Was the hotel in operation then?

AB: Oh, yes. It was a small house with a wood and coal stove, if you could find the coal - or the wood, as far as that goes. How we lived in that place is amazing. How my mother did what she did to raise 5 kids is just beyond belief. Not having sufficient money for food, and we were off the water mains ……

CHAPTER TWO

AB: In those days the winters were hard.

RM: That's what everybody's telling me.

AB: They were harder and there was more moisture. I've seen it rain all during the month of January I've seen 14-foot drifts right there in the road by the Goldfield Hotel. And just bitter cold - 20 degrees below, 25 degrees below. And of course, my dad was out of work, and he was getting older - he was probably 50. And he developed rheumatoid arthritis and spent lots of time in bed. We had the wood stove in the kitchen - that's where most of the time was spent - and no sink or running water. Out on the back porch was a 50 gallon galvanized tank, with a lid that wouldn't fit, and we'd get water on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, if I'm not mistaken.

RM: Oh, somebody'd deliver water?

AB: Yes.

RM: So there were a lot of people in town who didn't have running water. AB: There were a number of them. The water came from a spring up there by Rabbit Springs, which would be southwest of Goldfield. And there was more water then. One fellow had a corral there where he kept his horses, and he did everything. He dug graves, he sold water, he cleaned out toilets -whatever was available. His name was S.H. Nolting, and they called him Shit-house Shorty - which was true. Supposedly he got the name from cleaning out the toilets. Where the rock was tough, and they couldn't dig it too deep, they'd get in there and muck it out. They tell the story about one time when he had a helper: he'd be down loading the buckets, and the helper'd be up top, and the guy said, "C'mon, Shorty, about time to get something to eat. I'm getting hungry."

He said, "Oh, you go ahead. Just bring me a sandwich and I'll eat it down here." [laughter) He drank a lot of whiskey, too. Never bothered anybody, but . . .

That's the way, we got our water. He had two 5-gallon buckets. And he'd came winter or summer. Those old horses in the snow . . . he had a 500-gallon tank lying horizontally on the wagon, with a spigot on the back where he'd load these buckets. And packing 2 of them, you have to be kind of strong. [chuckles) Whatever amount of money my dad had to fill the supply tank, which held 50 gallons. It was a penny a gallon. Mind you! 7 people living out of a 50-gallon tank of water. For 50 cents you'd get 50 gallons. And the top wouldn't fit tight. The dirt would get in there, and every once in awhile you'd find a mouse or some darn thing. You had to clean it out once in awhile - it would have the crud and the slime and so forth in it. It's a wonder I'm alive today, or any of us are; a wonder we didn't develop typhoid, or something.

RM: Was the house cold?

AB: Oh! Single wall construction, and the ceilings were - what do they call that? - cheesecloth. Did you ever see those? They have the rafters, then nothing over the rafters, and they'd put cheesecloth up, and then they'd paper it. And the roofs leaked. And those cold winters . . . my brother and I slept together, and we didn't have sufficient blankets. We'd pile clothes or whatever we could get, on top of that bed. When you got in it, you couldn't turn over; you were there for the night.

And how my nother managed . . . we didn't have wood, we didn't have coal. There were some old houses around us, and we'd start taking a board off the porch, and taking another one off . . . I don't know who they belonged to, but we never got called for it. By the end of the winter, why, it'd be a shell.

And then the fire chief of the county used to get coal by the 20 tons, or whatever it was. They'd put so much in the fire station and so much in the courthouse to build it up to whatever they needed. And if you had the right kind of a fire chief, he would leave the window in the back of the fire station open where they'd shovel the coal through. The coal was some fine and big chunks all mixed up. He knew that people were suffering, so he'd leave that window open. He wouldn't do it all the time, because he had to look out for his job, but he would do it. And he knew who was poor, and he'd slip them the word [whispers]: "Come down, and I'll leave that window open tonight; you can pick up some coal." And I've seen women . . There might be 3 or 4 families there for one night. There was a lady there - just a little lady - and she could pack the biggest chunk of coal you ever saw.

RM: Well, it sounds like your economic condition wasn't that unusual there. It sounds like there were other people who were hurting, too.

AB: Well, yes. But . . . I don't know, it seemed like that was the time when my dad was in a rut. He didn't feel well, and I suppose a lot of things preyed upon his mind; not being able to support his family the way he should, and . . . I can remember that the Elks came around one year. And I tell you, we were a-hurting for grub. They brought a box of good, substantial food. I don't know if there was a turkey, but there was food in it - I remember some oranges. And he was so proud that he wouldn't let them leave it. It like to broke us kids' hearts. And later on he joined the Elks, and he made me join. I've gone all through the chairs of the Lodge. He thought a lot of the Elks, after that. But he was so proud he just wouldn't take the food. And we needed it.

RM: Now, this is late '20s, right?

AB: Yes. And the kids were starting to grow up. The people who were better off were the store owners, professional men - like it is today, pretty much - the superintendents of the mining companies.

RM: Was there active mining at this time there?

AB: In some places; there was some promotional mining.

RM: That's where they were just digging because they were raising money on the digging?

AB: That's right. I can show you some stock in there - the Goldfield Deep Nines Company of Nevada. That was a shaft out there about 2,000 feet deep. And they were always going to hit the big body of ore.

RM: The big one, yes.

AB: Yes, "It's coming on . . ."

RM: Yes, "We're getting good indications . .

AB: I'll tell you how they promoted it: They had offices there on the corner of the Bank Building, which is still there. It was called Goldfield Deep Nines Company. I think you'll see some of the gold leaf still on the windows there on one of the corners. And the telephone office was just back of there. And around the corner was the theater. But Goldfield Deep Nines had the Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune leased. And that's where they put all their promotional material.

RM: In the newspaper?

AB: Yes, and letters - they were printed through the newspaper. There were copies of the paper with headlines. And they hired us kids to put these letters in envelopes, and mail them to all their stockholders, I guess, or anyplace that would bring money in. And we would roll the newspapers. And those were all sealed, stamped, and mailed.

RM: And they were producing the newspaper too so that they could plant their own stories?

AB: They could do whatever they wanted. They paid us kids 2 bits an hour. I've got a cancelled check in there for $8.50 for one week's work. And then they also had paper routes, where the kids took the west side, the east side, whatever it was.

RM: So they sunk a 2,000-foot shaft on that . . .

AB: Out there east of the big mining area up about 2 miles. And of course they paid pretty good money. They had to - there was lots of water, and it was hot down there, and they had to have young huskies to stand it.

But those were the type of people who were better off. And of course it was Prohibition then and there were bootleg joints. I sold papers in the bootleg joints, and many times I would get 25 or 50 cents for a paper which cost me 5 cents.

RM: [chuckles] Were there a lot of people in Goldfield at that time?

AB: No, not a lot. Probably there were 50 in high school. That school is still there. The high school was on the top floor, as I recall, and the bottom part was the grades.

Times were tough, and everything had to care into the mining camps by rail, or by truck - Model-T trucks with a Ruxtel axle in them. There used to be a farmer from Bishop, named Adams. He'd care to Goldfield with a load of fresh vegetables and fruits in a Model-T truck. In fact, he took me with him to Bishop. He lived out there in west Bishop and grew some things there, and then he picked up some things wherever he could get produce. That was the first time I ever saw so much corn in my life. He and his family would go out and get corn from the garden and cook the corn in a washtub. The first time I saw that, I ate a dozen ears of it. He used to care over to Goldfield through Big Pine, up Westgard Pass. He used to carry a grub box and a bedroll, because I think it took him 2 days to make the trip. And he had to have somebody with him, because it was steep - steeper then than it is now - all dirt road. And he'd have to have somebody on those steep pitches - he'd buck that Model-T, and keep lugging it, and it'd get hot, and he'd have to have somebody with a piece of a tie to put underneath the wheel so it wouldn't roll back down the hill. And that's what I did. And then sometimes he'd care back by Silver Peak and down by the Alum Mine, and aver Immigrant Pass. You see, there were a lot of the present roads that weren't in then. That's the way he'd go back to Bishop.

RM: How did the Depression affect Goldfield?

AB: Badly. There were no jobs . . . maybe the Deep Mines Company was working, but I think that really came along earlier. But there weren't any companies working; everything was leasers. In other words, you'd get a prospecting permit in the old workings aver there. And there are miles of them. And if you found something that had a possibility, maybe you'd find a little value, you would ask for a lease. And they would give you a lease on, say, a 200-foot square block of ground - mind you, 200-foot square - and you'd go to work.

RM: Did the big companies still awn the mines?

AB: They still owned the mines.

RM: Was that Wingfield, and . .

AB: Goldfield Consolidated Mine, and the Florence Mining Company, and different ones.

RM: Were the companies operating in the '20s? Or was it leasing then, too?

AB: No, Goldfield started to go downhill about in 1908. I have Ransom's report in there, which gives you all the history on the mining, when the big production was, and the whole ball of wax. But they still had the railroad in Goldfield, and some of the leasers were lucky.

RM: Occasionally somebody hit it?

AB: Oh, boy, I'll tell you. I know of 2 cases. At that time you could ship to the AS&R at Garfield, Utah. That was the Guggenheims, as I understand it. In other words, the Guggenheims used to be in the mining business, and they never got the returns they expected from their shipments when they sent them to smelters. So the old man says, "Hey, son. We are in the wrong business." [laughter] So they got into the smelting business.

RM: Yes. Where else did they ship out of Goldfield? Did they ship to Ely at all?

AB: No.

RM: Did they ship to Selby, California?

AB: Yes. Some of the real high grade went to Selby. And I remember one lease - an Englishman - and his partner was a Serbian. There were lots of Serbians and Finlanders in mining, you know. They had a lease on the extension of the Hays-Monet, which I always called the Jumbo property. And he went down a 90-foot incline and then off to the right, and there was a slip there, in the drift. Which means a movement in the earth at some time. And he said, "Well that looks pretty good. I think I'll punch some holes through that." Most all of the work then was hand steel, unless you had your own compressor.

RM: Now, this is the '20s?

AB: No, the '30s. He hit a vein of ore there that was 3 to 4 feet wide. And it was just full of gold. You could auger some of it - you didn't have to drill it. It was easy hand drilling, and easy to break and handle. I know one carload of ore they mined - the railroad was still there - they brought the boxcar up there and put it on the siding. He lined it with building paper and put 52 or 53 tons, whatever you were allowed, in that car, and it went to Garfield, Utah, at Selby through the Goldfield Consolidated Mining Company. And it ran $900 a ton.

RM: What was gold, then?

AB: Gold was $20. And he had a wife and a boy and 2 girls. His wife and my mother were good friends. And this man was a sharp guy - he was a carpenter and a millwright, and he used his head, but it was poor times, then. Everybody had hard times finding work, or anything to do, to make a dollar. I think they made about $100,000 apiece. I don't know whatever happened to the Serbian - maybe he went back to the old country. But ¬this is kind of an interesting part of the story. He was an Englishman. He was happy to have the money, but he got a little bit smart and pretty big-headed - "I've got what the other guy doesn't have." You know how that goes. But he invested in property at Silver Peak, which was coming on, then. He had rentals there, and he was a pretty handy carpenter, and he'd fix them up. But he got on the barleycorn.

RM: Is that right?

AB: Yes. Oh, he made a trip to England and all those kind of things. But he got so bad that it caused a lot of heartaches in the family. He got to drinking so bad that he moved from the house that he and his wife lived in at Silver Peak to the one next door, the rental that he had, and took what was left of a case of whiskey, and they packed him out in the basket and some of the whiskey was still left.

And the irony of the whole story is that his wife told my mother, "You know, we were so happy to think that we had things again. And that money caused nothing hit trouble and heartaches in this family."

And then later on Martin Duffy and Ben Baird made a nice strike down in the Florence.

RM: These were all leasers, weren't they?

AB: These were all leasers. Some of them made it, and some of them didn't. Olie Olson and Pious Kalen made some money. And Olie Olson was the discoverer of the 16-to-1 mine in the Silver Peak district. He was a carpenter. He kept . . . all those years. He'd go out there every year and do assessment work. Later he moved to Washington. And at least he lived long enough to see it into production.

RM: What did people do with their money when they made it? Did they tend to stay in town, or did they usually move out?

AB: Oh, I think they stayed there. Martin Duffy and Ben Baird stayed there, and Martin eventually wound up by owning the Florence mine and all the property. They moved to the mine because there was a house on the corner of the main street as you make the big left-hand turn to go to Las Vegas, and somebody was always going through the barriers and hitting the house. It happened about 3 times. And he finally said, 'Well, that's enough of that." So they moved out to the Florence mine dump, where they couldn't get hit by trucks.

CHAPTER THREE

RM: How long did you attend school in Goldfield, Al?

AB: I graduated from high school in Goldfield in 1931. That was pretty much the height of the Depression.

RM: What did you do then? And what was your dad doing?

AB: Well, in the meantime, I tried to help support the family. I got out of high school when I was 16 years old. I had started school in Luning when I was 4 years old, because they had to have 5 children to make a class; to hire a teacher. There were 5, and one left. So they said, "Veil, get Bradshaw." I was 4 years old. The schoolhouse is still there. I've got a picture of the schoolhouse and the students, who were, at that time, my brother and I and others, on the steps of the school.

When I graduated, I went to work as a section hand on the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad. That was the dirtiest part of the work - a section hand. You did anything and everything. And you rode to work at 20 degrees below zero or whatever it was on an open car. My mother prepared what lunch she had, and the coffee would be cold, the meat in the sandwiches would be frozen, and all that kind of stuff. But you did the work of a Marl, or you didn't stay there. And we had what we call a Mexican-loving boss. So he kind of favored the Mexicans. I guess maybe he was forced into hiring a white man. There was a bay by the name of Simmons - he was older than I was - and myself; we were two of the section hands.

RM: Did you work the whole line between Tonopah and Goldfield?

AB: Yes. Mostly from Klondike to Goldfield. This area here was controlled by another section.

RM: Was the railroad running pretty frequently along there?

AB: Oh, yes. You'd leave one day and came back the next.

RM: It'd leave for where?

AB: Mina. The salary was 35 cents an hour. That was your pay. $2.80 a day. TWo weeks' paycheck was around $34, $35. And I mean, you worked. I took my money home to my-mother, because my dad was sick, and 7 of us survived. We ate a lot of beans, stews . . . For example, you could go down to the meat market - the Goldfield Meat and Grocery - which was run by a man by the name of Laub. He knew who was poor and who wasn't. I can remember going down there when I was younger, and getting the knuckle of a beef, and he'd leave meat on it - that was a soup bone. And he'd go over there in the wooden bins where the fresh vegetables were, and he'd pick out all the loose ones that had fallen off. He'd throw them in the sack for the kid, and that was 2 bits. And my mother would put macaroni, spuds, carrots and whatever she had with it.

But before I was working on the railroad, I did everything; I did anything. I chopped wood. When I was growing up I cleaned yards. I would do anything to make 2 bits, or 50 cents, or whatever it was, to give to my mother. I wouldn't even spend 10 cents for a show.

When I was working on the railroad there were 3 of us: W. H Barlow, the son of B. I Barlow, who was a big retail grocery and wood and coal man over there, and another kid by the name of Jepperson. We got to prospecting in the Florence mine, and the fellow who had made the big strike said, "Well, there is a slip back in the Riley section of the Florence mine." It was in the fault area. "And," he said, "run a raise up through the slip." W0911, . went up there about 20 feet. We were just kids, you know, and we'd go down there after work, climb down the shaft - 250 feet on incline ladders - carry whatever steel . had to, work 3 or 4 hours down there, and run back up the ladder.

RM: This was after working on the railroad?

AB: Yes. Well, by gosh, one day NNE put in some shots, and here was a 4 x 4 face of white stuff - we were running through a darker material And it was full of gold. There were 50 ounces in gold to the ton. Big headlines in the paper: Kids' Lease Mikes A Big Strike On The Florence! Well, NNE thought, "Man, this is just the starting of the world." And it was a seam - maybe 3 inches thick. We chlorided that and followed the seam. And we made a small shipment - I think 20 tons. That was $20 gold.

And then when gold went up to $35 . . . NNE had followed this to the north, and it'd begin to widen out a little bit. And it wouldn't pan gold. We always used a pan - NNE could judge what it would run by doing that. All the old-timers, once they got accustomed to an area, would pan it and: "OK, that'll make ore." So we left a round of material there and it wouldn't pan anything. Barlow and I said, "Well, let's go back there and we'll get a sample out of that, just for fun." Well, it ran almost 3 ounces - the muck pile we'd left there the time before. We did the same thing: After work and on Sundays we went out there and worked. And we shipped 79,000 pounds, which is almost 40 tons. And I still have the old settlement sheet from the smelter, and what they paid for gold. Goldfield gold was real fine - 900 and better fine. Silver - forget it, unless it VMS in a certain area. We just got over into the 30 percent royalty bracket with Goldfield Deep Nines Company - it was a breaking point. Up, say, to $20 was 10 percent, $20 to so-and-so was 15, and . . .

RM: They owned the Florence?

AB: Yes. Goldfield Deep Mines Company. Anyhow, we got a check . . . they got as much out of it as we did, and we did all the work. At that time I VMS married, and I went and bought a 1937 Ford 2-door sedan with heavy-duty tires from Orlo Parker at Brown Parker's garage.

RM: A new one?

AB: Yes. Brand spanking new - $737. That was in 1937.

RM: Meanwhile, what had happened to your family? I mean, your man and dad and . .

AB: Well, as the kids grew up and this one got married and the other one got married, and so on, they moved to Barstow, California. And that's where my dad passed away. He worked for the civil service for the navy depot down there.

RM: When did he and your nom leave Goldfield?

AB: Oh, I'd say around 1940. When I graduated from high school in 1931, that was still tough times. And my dad told me, "Well, son, I don't know what you're going to do for a suit of clothes. I just don't have the money." So I earned the money - which was $14. There were 2 girls and 2 boys who graduated from high school in 1931.

RM: When did you get married?

AB: In '36.

RM: Did you marry a local girl?

AB: No, I married a girl from Taft, California. Her folks had came out here - her dad worked in the oilfields. He was a farmer in Missouri, and he just couldn't make it back there. He heard about the oilfields around Taft and Bakersfield, and he came out and got a job there. And she came up there.

And we struggled along. The Bradshaw Mill started operation then, which was the rerunning of the original tailings left by the Goldfield Consolidated Mill.

RM: Is that the big one?

AB: That's the big one on the left. And that was a pretty good job. They paid $5 for laborers, $5.50 for filtermen, and the solution man, who was the boss on the 3-man shift, got $6. And they ran those tailings - they sluiced them down with a hydraulic sluice. Water was a problem. You see, Goldfield never had much water - it originally came from Lida.

RM: They brought their water in from Lida?

AB: Yes. A fellow by the name of Dentweiler was running the water company, and they didn't keep the lines maintained. From Lida it ran by gravity almost to Goldfield - just on the other side of the Malapais Mountains, where they had a pumping station. As far as I know, that's the only pumping station they had, to boost it over the hill. And in '31 or '32 - somewhere in the '30s - a big freeze came. They just folded up and left the town without water.

RM: What did the town do?

AB: They got water from Rabbit Springs, or some local wells.

RM: Was the water deep there?

AB: Some of it was surface water. And then I guess later on they drilled wells. Of course, now the water comes from Klondike and it's pushed up that hill.

RM: It comes clear from Klondike

AB: Yes. That's just a recent project in the last few years. There was a well at Klondike on the railroad 400 feet deep. It was sunk by hand - all timbered and everything like that, so they knew there was water. In later years they drilled wells there, and they found plenty of water. So the water is pumped to Goldfield.

RM: You moved over to Tonopah in '41. What brought you to Tonopah?

AB: I went to work at the Bradshaw Mill. It's the same name as mine, but not from the same area. Mark Bradshaw claimed we were shirttail relatives. Mark Bradshaw was a pretty good mining man and a promoter type of guy. He told my father that he traced the family tree and there was 2 brothers in England - or over there someplace - who got in trouble. They were going to behead then, so they came to this country. When they got here, one ran to the south and one ran to the north, and Mark was from the north Bradshaws, and we're from the southern branch.

RM: And eventually part of the family crossed again in Goldfield.

AB: Yes. Mark Bradshaw had 3 smart men with him. He had a fellow by the name of Smith, who knew the mining and milling business. He had Albert Silvers, who was a famous Nevada mining man - a metallurgist.

And then he had a fellow by the name of Tanner. And they needed money. So Mark Bradshaw went back to New York. (That's always where the money can from - New York.) And he promoted money back there; I don't know how much, but he had the right type of people at the right time. The employees were glad to get the money - they worked, say, 7, or 8 months out of the year - and [the mill operated] 24 hours a day, every day. And the wages were good. You worked day shift, afternoons and graveyard. So if you got on a short change, say you had just an 8-hour break there, that put $6 more in the pokey.

RM: Yes. So you're saying they worked 3 shifts at the mill?

AB: That's right.

RM: Was that a profitable enterprise?

AB: Yes. They always said, afterwards, that they took 3 million dollars out of those tailings. Some of it was done at $20 gold, and when the price went up to $35, they came back and re-ran lots of the ones that they had run. The mill was originally a 100-stamp mill.

And they used to get the water from Alkali Springs. The old ditch is still there. Then when they gave up the Goldfield tailings, they decided to move to Millers and run the tailings down there. That was at the start of the war. They got the mill running, and I don't }mow whether they were going to be successful, but Mt. Silvers told me they had to classify it and grind the sands. He said that's where the values are, is in the sands of the tailings piles. But the war shut them down, or something shut them down, and they sold out to Western Knapp, out of Sacramento.

RM: OK, so you worked on the operation at Goldfield, and then you came to Millers.

AB: We came over here, and built this mill down at Millers. We moved a lot of stuff over here, and we built it. In those days, you know, you didn't have machinery and all to lift things, and it was done with bars . .

RM: You had to man-handle everything.

AB: Yes - rollers, pipes, and pulling everything. And John Cavanaugh came to me and said, "I'm thinking of buying the Mizpah Hotel. I'd like to have you run the Union Oil bulk plant. I'll pay you $225 a month" - this was in '41 - "and I'll give you a commission" -which was half-a-cent per unit; like a gallon of gasoline, pound of grease, gallon of oil - "over 30,000 that you sell." Well, of course I had missed the draft. My youngest brother volunteered from Goldfield, and the other one didn't have any children, and I had children. So I took it on. And the air base was starting to build up at that time and there were contractors and the business boomed.

RM: Did the air base get their oil from you?

AB: Most of the contractors did. And after it got in operation, John Cavanaugh bid on the supply contract for the fuel oil. I don't know, he had nerve, or ingenuity, or something. Because he thought he had a source of oil with Union Oil Company, and Union Oil didn't like it. So he said, "Well, if you don't like it you can have this joint." And here we are with a great big contract with the government - Tonopah Army Air Base - and no oil to refill the order with.

So he went down to Santa Maria - the Bell Refining Company - and got his stove oil. Then he went over to Mobil Oil Company, and they wanted an outlet in this area. They said, "Well, OK, if you will take on a distributorship there, and build a plant and so on and so forth, why, we'll supply you with the heavier fuels for the base."

So then we had to build a plant where Pargas is now - of course, all the tanks and everything are moved [now]. And we supplied the base with their heating oils.

RM: What was Tonopah like when they were constructing the base?

AB: It was good. We were supplying some of the contractors. Of course, Shell and Standard Oil were doing just about the same thing. And we built up the surrounding area - we had a service station at Silver Peak, we had one at Warm Springs, and so forth. And we sold things here in town. It just blossomed out from that. The construction was a boom, naturally; it brought people in. And good money - local people were making good money. And of course as they were built, they'd bring in the service men, and - my God - homes, and places to live, or sleep, or whatever, were at a premium. Those poor kids lived like dogs, a lot of them. They didn't have anything; they didn't subsidize them like they do now. And it was tough on them; newly married and all that.

RM: Some of the things they built out at the air base were pretty big facilities, like those hangers.

AB: Yes. There are still 2 or 3 of them left; there were many more.

RM: All that construction must've required a lot of manpower. To build the runways and barracks and everything.

AB: Oh, yes. And at that time we still had contracts with the contractors who were starting the development of the present Test Site area.

RM: Oh, I didn't realize they started that work in the '40s.

AB: Maybe it was in the '50s - these dates are beyond me. But what I'm getting at is, I used to take barrels of gasoline and supplies to a contractor out there at the Mellon Camp.

RM: Now, where was the Mellon Camp?

AB: Right in the center of the Test Site about 50 miles from Tonopah. RM: Was that paved road there? You know, the one where you go out past the air base and then you turn off to the right. And then it cuts to the east, and goes on down that valley - I forget what that valley's called. AB: Ralston Valley and Salisbury Valley came together down there about where the Point Able is for the present Test Site.

RM: When did they pave that road? Do you have any recollection of that? It wasn't there during the war, was it?

AB: I don't think so.

RM: I can remember in the middle '50s that road was paved and it was all but abandoned. Because in '56 or so we were down at Silver Bow, and that's how we got out there. We'd go down there and then go down a ways and then cut back to the east. And that was a paved road, and it was as if it was abandoned; there were holes in it and everything. So I wonder when they made that road, and why.

AB: I couldn't tell you that, but I know there was a road, because I remember coming along there as you turn off of Highway 6. Maybe the lower end of it was dirt road.

When the contracts got a little bigger and they got their own storage and all that we had a cab-over truck. And those Airacobras from the base out here used to come, and they'd go right in front of me. You know, a cab-over sits up a little higher, and it seemed like they weren't 20 feet off the ground. I'd be going along and - zoom . . . It was originally a B¬24 bomber base. And then they had the Airacobras here.

RM: And you say you delivered barrels out to where?

AB: Out to the Mellon Camp. This was in the middle or late '40s. The Mellon Camp is about 10, maybe 15 miles, in that valley, south of the present Point Able, or the main part of the Test Site. A fellow by the name of Jess Mellon had a mine out there. It's still there, I guess.

CHAPTER FOUR

RM: Were you running the Mobil bulk plant then?

AB: Petroleum distributing. In fact, I went to San Francisco when Mobil -which was then Sacony Vacuum - bought out General Petroleum Corporation and I met the president of the Mobil Oil Company.

RM: Where all did you deliver in this area?

AB: We delivered in an area about 200 miles square It included Round Mountain, Beatty, Silver Peak, Great Lakes Carbon - or, the diatomaceous earth mine west of here. We also used to deliver to the drillers out at Anaconda and up Smoky Valley, Goldfield, Lida, Fish Lake Valley, Warm Springs . . .

RM: How long did that go on?

AB: It was still going when I left after 30 years with the company. I originally went to work with Cavanaugh Brothers. We expanded. We started out small, and then we found out that we had to get into the trucking business and different types of businesses - the appliance business, the heating business and so forth to stay alive. The big companies always want your business and they want you to do this and they want you to do that, but they don't offer much assistance. It comes to the point where you can't be competitive. So we had to get out and buy some of our stuff on the open market. Like having our own trucking company.

Jim Merlin worked for us for years as did Angelo Scarlantini, Wayne Wallace, Martin Sorhover, Harold and Glen Jeffrey, Ermand Boni, and others. They were go-getting boys. The Cavanaugh parents were like a lot of the rest of the miners - you didn't have anything unless you hit a good lease, and those were few and far between. They sold bread and donuts that their mother baked in the streets here in the town of Tonopah. So nobody can begrudge them what they got out of it.

RM: Yes, they wound up with pretty big interests in the state, didn't they?

AB: Oh, yes. They got into Las Vegas; they built the Arlington Hotel in Reno; they were diversified, they were active, they were on the ball. They had the Barley Creek Ranch at one time, and had the Rodgers Ranch, which is now the Zimmerman Ranch, in Smoky Valley. They were tied up with E. L. Cord on cattle at one time.

RM: In Fish Lake?

AB: Yes. We used to deliver fuel to him during the rationing period. And I'll never forget; he'd came out to check my truck. At that time we didn't have pumps and meters and all that stuff, it was a tank and there was a marker in there, and it held 300 gallons. He wanted to know how I did this, and I had to block up one side to get it so it would drain out of the tank. He wanted to }maw how I knew I was getting 300 gallons, or whatever.

I said, "Well, you can get up here - I'll show you." I showed him, and he looked it over. They're sealed by the state weights and measures man.

And he got off the truck - he was a young man, then - nice-looking. And he had the finest ranch out there that ever was. Of course, he had the availability of stamps, because that was agriculture. He said, "Well, anytime you're here you go over there to the boarding house. They have lunch at such-and-such a time." And I'll tell you, talk about a boarding house. That was always the way in the early days, around here. If you were someplace at mealtime, you'd better put your feet under the table, because they won't like you if you don't. It's a different story nowadays.

And he had Holstein cows. And I mean, they were the best. They produced lots of milk. It was in bottles. And it was the raw milk - the cream was on it. A third of it was cream.

RM: This would've been in the 1940s?

AB: Well, during the rationing period. So I raised my family here, and then I lost my wife in 1960, and she was a young woman - 47 years old. There's the oldest boy, who still lives here, and the daughter, who lives in Carson City. The youngest boy is living here.

RM: Lisa Bradshaw is your granddaughter, isn't she?

AB: Yes. She's the same class as your daughter.

RM: Well, Bambi was a year ahead of Lisa

AB: What's she doing now?

RM: She's going to UNLV.

AB: Oh, good.

RM: I saw that Lisa was Homecoming Queen.

AB: I was very happy for her - very happy about it.

RM: Yes, that was nice.

AB: But I can look back now at a lot of hard times, and lots of struggles, and I guess that's the way life is made. And I can truthfully say that I raised 3 good Americans. I think that's a very good accomplishment.

RM: Yes. You can't really do anything better.

AB: And, you know, now that I live alone, I look back, and how that little 90-pound wife of mine did what she did! You know, the shirts were ironed . . . We did have a washing machine, but we just didn't have everything, even here. And I made fairly good money; I made fairly good commissions. But I'll tell you, that's when you appreciate a good partner.

RM: Yes. When did you say you retired from Cavanaugh, then?

AB: '72. I didn't retire, but the company wasn't the way I had been brought up with. In other words, if you were the manager, you ran the place. If you had a problem, you worked it out. And then when the bigger companies started coming in: "Well, here's the book. Now you follow this line. And don't you do what that line won't let you do."

RM: Did Cavanaugh sell it out, then?

AB: Yes. They got into a co-op, which was Delta (mss, made up of a group of people in the same business in California. They got together and formed this group to get into the wholesale buying - fuel was critical - and be sure that they'd have a supply of fuel. And they could get appliances cheaper and all that. And then of course the co-op sold out to Pargas. RM: When did Cavanaugh get into the co-op? Was that while you were still there?

AB: I was still there.

RM: So you were no longer working for the Cavanaughs, so to speak?

AB: No. I was working for Pargas. And of course they did everything their way. And at that time Pargas was the biggest L-P gas outfit in the United States. But they have sold out. Now, the little $200 a month pension check I get comes from National Distilleries.

After 30 years I said, 'Well, the family's raised, and if I'm going to do anything that I've wanted to do, I'd just better start doing it. Even if I have to go back to work." I leased in Goldfield, and I liked it - the mining, and the prospecting, and all that, and that's the way I have to survive.

RM: Yes. So you're still mining.

AB: I don't do the actual mining, but I have some gold deposits. I have one option and the possibility of another one. I am a prospector.

RM: In the Goldfield area?

AB: No. One's in the Manhattan area, and 2 of them are north of Royston. Royston is 22 miles on what they call the old Poleline Road on the turnoff to go to Cloverdale. Originally they had some silver there, but it became a very famous royal blue turquoise [mine]. It produced for years and years. And then there was also the Easter Blue, or the Blue Gem, which Jeanne Pott's grandfather Cirac discovered; that's in the same range.

In fact, the valley to the west of Royston is called Cirac Valley, named after Jeanne's grandfather. And that was a big producer. And later on there was one to the south of the Faster Blue or Blue Gem called the Smoky Valley. That came in later. It was owned by Winfield and discovered by George Dyer and James Wike. Winfield was a big turquoise dealer out of Arizona.

RM: In your growing up in Goldfield, was there ever any bitterness that you remember, or felt yourself, over the fact that, basically, large, outside interests were making all the money, and the people in town were not getting that much of it? You know, that there was a lot of poverty and so on.

AB: Well, I don't know that I ever looked at it that way. I always felt so fortunate to have a job. That was the main issue. But in the late '30s the Eastern Exploration Company came in there. They were a subsidiary of Calumet and hecla, out of Michigan, and they took a lease on the Goldfield Consolidated Property and I don't know how they found it, but they did some development and exploration work, and they found a very high-grade stope in the Claremont mine. And they also had the Laguna that they worked out of, and they had the old Merger Mine. I worked for them for a number of years. Most all those mines were producing and I assume that they made some money. The railroad was still there, and they used to ship the ore out to Garfield, Utah.

But there was one stope down there in the Claremont that was a real high-grade ore. In fact, I know one man who picked up a piece - he stole it; high-graded it. And it weighed about 3 pounds. It was maybe 4 inches long, half an inch wide, and 3 inches across. He took it out to Blackjack at Round Mountain, and Blackjack gave him $300 cash. Blackjack was a famous gold buyer at Round Mountain.

RM: Oh, was he? I'm not familiar with that name.

AB: Oh, yes. He just bought gold, period.

RM: He bought from the high-graders?

AB: Well, sure. Stolen stuff. Hot stuff.

RM: And then he'd melt it down, probably, or something.

AB: He'd get rid of it somehow. Maybe he had somebody else buying it from him. But you know darn well if he gave you $300 for a piece, he was going to double his money. You see, Goldfield was noted for high-grading.

That's when they brought the militia in to straighten all that out, and that's when they put in the restrooms. I have heard the old-timers tell of coming up on the cage, and some of them would fall down, they were so heavily loaded with high-grade

RM: [laughs] Is that right!

AB: There were 54 assay offices and reduction works in Goldfield during the boon. And what happened is - to my understanding - the companies, like Goldfield Consolidated Company, Combination Mines, etc., couldn't seen to make a go of things. And they would lease - for instance, the Hayes Monette, which produced the most famous carload of ore that was ever shipped out of the west, I guess. Fifty-some tons . . . the return check was over $500,000 - maybe you've seen copies of that check.

RM: I think I have, yes.

AB: Well anyhow, they would give a short lease - 3 to 8 months or whatever. And the leaser, you know, was just like a root hog. He'd follow . . . a few colors, and start following it. Pretty soon it'd blossom out into a massive high-grade body. And maybe he only had 2 months to go on his lease. Maybe he only had a month. So he'd hire everybody he could. And he'd say, "Fellows, as long as you do a good day's work for me, I don't care if you take home some." Well, that's just what they did. So it was free, it was lucrative, you know, and they'd take it out to the reduction works, or whoever was buying the gold, and get some money, and go down to the Northern Saloon, the joints, the red-light district, and spend it.

RM: In living in Goldfield and growing up there in the '20s and '30s, did you get over to Tonopah much?

AB: I got over here to a Fourth of July celebration in a Model-T. The road was all dirt Looking from Tonopah to Goldfield the road would be to the east. It came through Divide, and if you could make it in 45 minutes, you were doing a pretty good job. I came over here one time when I was 13 or 14, and I had $2. I don't know where I slept or where I stayed, but I stayed 2 days and I ran in the races. They had foot races, car races, and horse races on the Fourth of July.

And they used to have a boxing arena. They'd build a boxing arena right between the Mizpah Hotel and the drug store, and the kids could go up there, and: "Hey kid, you want to fight?" And one kid - Fabbi boy - his father owned the bakery - said, "Hey, kid, you want to box?" So I boxed. But I believe that time I went back to Goldfield with my 2 silver dollars.

But when I was a kid in Goldfield, growing up, I worked for B. I. Barlow, who had the coal, wood, ice, grains, etc., down on Broadway. And I used to deliver ice in blocks - 25 pounds, whatever one would want, up into the Goldfield Hotel and down into the red-light district. There wasn't too many places there, but I can remember one time I went into a place with a bar in front. I asked, "Need any ice in your icebox?"

And a woman said, "Ohhh . . ." she was all full of sleep. She said, "Well, came on in and check." And she got out of bed - in her little shortie - and went back to the kitchen where the icebox was: "Yeah, you better bring me 25 pounds." There was some guy in bed with her.

But they were always good pay, and they liked cottontail rabbits. If you'd get a cottontail rabbit, you'd get 6 bits for it.

RM: How long did Goldfield's red-light district last?

AB: I suppose during the boom. It was pretty much on the downhill side then.

RM: Somebody here in Tonopah was telling me about the red light district here in the '20s and '30s; it was almost unbelievable. I've been told that there were large numbers of girls, and huge dance halls, and . . .

AB: Oh, you'd better believe it. Even the time I remember of the red light district, there were 2 streets of them, I know. Right where the L&L Motel is, part of it. And as you say, they had the dance halls, cribs and all. Of course there were lots of leasers here in Tonopah and lots of then made money. Some of those leasers in Tonopah, when they'd make a big strike and ship, would go down to the Tonopah Club and gamble and have their party, and take money out and throw it on the streets, (which were, as I recall, gravel) and watch the kids fight over the money.

I believe this was in the '30s. It was hard to lease in Goldfield because there were so many areas that had been picked over and backfilled. The leasers wouldn't hoist their waste. They'd take it and backfill it in the stopes and drifts. So you couldn't get all through the mines. There were families over there that had 5 kids and never, never made a strike.

Then of course the WPA came along, and my dad later on became fire chief - I still have his badge. And I can remember very-well when the Polies were there, in the Goldfield Hotel, on the corner. And when they left, a fellow by the name of Felis bought them out - across the street.

Felis had a drugstore and grocery store when we were very poor. We awed him a big, chunky grocery bill; I don't know how much, but from $400 to $800. I can remember my dad saying he should be getting a check from back east. I asked him what it was and he said, "Well, it's some part of the family. And "it's handled through the Gerard Trust Company." It finally came through, and it was for $3,000, if I'm not mistaken. That was the happiest merchant you ever saw when dad brought it in and paid his bill. There was so much credit in those days. Most everybody was on credit. And if you paid your bill by the 10th, you got a box of candy as encouragement.

BM: The credit places were higher in prices, weren't they?

AB: Oh, certainly.

AB: A friend of mine who worked in the store: Somebody'd come in and ask him something about something, and he'd say, "Oh, those are 20 cents apiece - 2 for 45."

A fellow [might] say, "Oh, I'll take 2 of them." [laughter] There were lots of incidents that would take hours and hours to relate. Around the bootleg joints, and some of the old-timers who used to come into the Santa Fe Club. There was one little fellow there - his name was Johnny Bush - I think his home is still there, right close to the Santa Fe Club. Just a tin shack and on the side of it is a kind of a lean-to. If [they] haven't taken it off, it's still there. I hope they don't. Full of wooden boxes. He did anything - worked in the mines, worked on the railroad, worked for the grocery man, the meat market - Laub's Meat and Grocery - he did anything. He would buy a pair of overalls that would last him 20 years, because he'd patch them and sew with the string that they used to wrap the meat with, which was a good string. And he always bought Bank of America stock. And he made money leasing. He'd always wear a muzzle in those old, dusty mines. A lot of the fellows who worked at the same time didn't, and they got dusted.

RM: Was the dust as bad in Goldfield as it was in Tonopah?

AB: Not as bad as it was in Tonopah.

RM: Didn't have as much silica?

AB: No.

CHAPTER FIVE

AB: Bob, in going aver the [work we did on the other tapes, I've remembered] my mother telling me about her grandmother.

RM: That would be your great-grandmother?

AB: Yes, it had to be her grandmother. She was part Spanish or Mexican, and her name was Fermina Serrias. The town of Mina was named after her.

RM: Oh, is that right. How did that happen?

AB: John M. Fulton, the developer of the land, in 1905 gave the new community the name of Mina, which was her nickname. She was a prospector. She was a good-looking, rangy type of woman, and she loved the desert; loved the hills. This was probably in the late 1800s and early 1900s when the boon in a lot of the mining camps was going on. She would wear her overalls, hiking boots, and hat, and she'd take off and head for the hills and prospect. If she had to walk 20 miles a day it didn't bother her, whatever the distance was. I don't think she camped out, but she would make a discovery. At that time it was the base metals like copper, gold, silver, and lead that you looked for. The word would get out and she would make a deal on it; sell it. It was always for cash - always gold.

My mother said that one time she made a deal and she can remember the $20 gold pieces piled up on the table and I think it was $8,000 or $10,000 in $20 gold pieces, in payment or partial payment for a property. She'd make one of these big finds and get a large chunk of money . . . she also liked the better side of life. So she would go to L.A. or San Francisco, preferably San Francisco - it was kind of a home for the mining people ¬and she'd get the best hotel, get all new clothes and hats and shoes, the finest of everything, and have a chauffeur, the whole ball of wax, drink the finest wines, have the finest dinners, and if she got a little bit lonesome, she'd get herself a gigolo.

RM: She wasn't married at this time?

AB: No. She had been married, I guess, 4 or 5 times during her life. She was a good-looking woman.

RM: Was she a relatively young at this time?

AB: I would assume so. I didn't really get down to the nitty-gritty of it; just a general idea. But then she'd be getting short on money so she'd came back home to Luning or Mina and throw or give away all her good clothes and hats and shoes, put on her "diggers," and head for the hills again. I don't know how many times she did that.

BM: In a sense, she was just like the male prospectors. When they had it, they lived it up, and when they didn't, they were out in the hills.

AB: Very, very true. As she got older, she got senile. A lot of people do that - "You're stealing from me." They get goofy. There was a younger man there and he figured this old gal was going to die pretty soon, so he'd marry her and get her money. With all the property she'd sold and everything, she must have some money. Come to find out, when she passed away he couldn't find any roomy. He was so mad that he wanted to take all the gold teeth out of her mouth before they buried her. Of course, the family wouldn't let him do that. My mother's brother's wife, Marguerita, had a good memory; she remembered part of this. I was talking with Marguerita, and I said, "Do you suppose Fermina had money?"

"Oh, she had some money."

I said, "Well, what did she do with it?" Most people didn't believe in banks then.

And she said, "She hid it."

Well, that's logical. I said, "Well, where did she hide it?"

"She hid it in the chicken coop." Because you know what chickens do; the minute they're disturbed, they start squawking and flying all over. It's an immediate response, an immediate signal.

So I said, "Marguerita, do you remember where they used to live?" She said, "I think so."

And I said, "Well (she was getting older), why don't you come up and stay with me, and I'll get a metal detector, and we'll drive down there and look and see if we can find anything." You know, there was a chance. Maybe she didn't hide it, or maybe it was found; we don't know.

But she said, "OK."

Then her family got mixed up in it - her kids - and they were always going to get a motor home, and bring her up, and all this . . . it didn't materialize. And when they got into it, I didn't follow. So she passed away. Maybe the old gal took the money out into the hills, if she had any. It might have been a tall tale, but it was a true tale.

RM: When did Fermina finally pass away?

AB: I don't know when she passed away.

RM: Now, that was your mother's grandmother?

AB: Yes.

RM: OK, what about your mother's mother - the daughter of Fermina? Did she grow up in Mina?

AB: I don't know. But I do know that it's a matter of history in the state of Nevada. Fermina was called "The Copper Queen of Nevada." A man who lived in Goldfield by the name of M. B. Aston was the one who told me about it. So just recently I went up to the Nevada Historical Society and talked with Mr Earl, and related this story to him, and he had written an article which made most of the papers about "Women in Mining." And Fermina's name was in there.

And there was another one, "Happy Days Jester." She was around the Goldfield area and I knew her; also Mary Sigmund. We had a nice chat about it. Happy Days was a tall, dark-complected, rangy woman, and if I'm not mistaken [she was] in the Cocamunga-Long Springs placer area. I remember one case (I don't know why I was in the courthouse) when they had her up. I think she was married and her husband was trying to get an insanity case against her. They had a hearing on it in Goldfield, and I remember being in the courtroom or hearing about it. There was a judge there, a big man, by the name of Brown. He had a great, big hook nose on him, and he was asking her questions on the stand. He asked her some type of a question, and she thought awhile, and said,       Mr. Brown, now, you are a man of learning, an educated man, a man of knowledge, a man of words; just think a minute. Don't you think that's a very improper way to put a question to a person like me?" The courthouse could have fallen to pieces, right there.

RM: I wonder what the question was?

AB: I don't remember. Something relative to something she did in her sanity hearing, or whatever.

RM: Was she implying that it was improper in the sense that she was a lady, or because she was crazy?

AB: Just because it was an improper way to put a question. Then there was Mrs. Sigmund.

RM: What was she like?

AB: She was married and they had property in the Redlich area between here and Mina; that was her mine. Sigmund, what would that nationality be?

RM: Possibly German?

AB: And she was a housewife with a heavier build. There were lots of women in mining in those days.

RM: Women who owned the mines, or actually went in and did the work?

AB: Mostly owned them.

RM: Did they acquire them from their husbands?

AB: Probably.

RM: Was there a taboo against women in the mines?

AB: Oh, certainly. That was bad luck way, way back with the miners. don't ever recall seeing a woman in a mine. In the days when I grew up it was kind of odd - maybe it wasn't odd then, but it seems odd now - they always attached a lot of nicknames among people. Like Scotty the Pig, Dago Joe, Panhandle Pete, and Poker Bob. Something would happen that would relate to this particular instance, and they'd just tack that on.

RM: I wonder how Scotty the Pig got his name?

AB: He was about like a pig. He was heavy-set, and just greasy looking ¬not that he had a snout or anything, but . . .

RM: Did they use this name in addressing him in his presence?

AB: Oh, absolutely. I know of 2 instances of finding caches of gold when people buried them, or that something happened to. [People would] put [their money] in something substantial and bury it in the ground. There was a J.P. there by the name of Tawney, and he lived on Broadway. Before the big fire, I think it was Broadway and Main that came together at an angle. That old shoemaker was German, and he lived right on the corner, right in the V part. They had the big fire and I don't know what happened to the shoemaker, but I think he moved uptown to the section that is still there. He probably died somewhere along the line.

This Mr. Tawney used to tell different people, "That old shoemaker had money, and he had it buried there someplace where he lived." And the fire came along and they didn't have any means . . . nobody took the time to look. There was a Serbian from Tonopah. I can't recall his name, but he was a tall man, considerably over 6 feet, and he got on to this shoemaker and the story about him. Tawney told him, "You go up there and do it right, dig, and you might be lucky and find it." Well, the guy did the digging. He scratched all the burned stuff off and started digging and poking where there might be a soft spot, and by gosh, he found the Dutch oven, and if I'm not mistaken there was $18,000 in gold coins.

Of course, nobody thought gold coins were gold coins; they were to spend. [They didn't think about] the historical value, or the date value, or the fineness, or anything else as they do now. He got that $18,000 and somebody told me that there was a connection between him and somebody else, but he didn't own up to the fact that he found that until after he spent most of it. He bought himself a brand-new Chrysler Airflow car. This was in the '30s. They were streamlined - a good car and a fast car. He went back to the old country and bought himself new clothes. He just had a really good time, and about the time he was broke, why, I don't know the connection between him and somebody else, but they got into a fight and he got all beat up. But he found, and evidently spent, that $18,000. And that is true.

Another cache was found in an old dwelling down by the Goldfield Consolidated Mill. Somebody found it in the wall in one of these old rock buildings - you know how they built them up, with the native rock. But I don't know the details.

RM: I'll bet there are still some aver there.

AB: There are bound to be. When I was a boy, I used to come from school, or town, back of the gymnasium, which was, or is now . . . the county shop. The trail went back of the gymnasium and then north to our house. One evening just about dark, I was coming home. Down at the bottom of the back of the gymnasium, [on] the slope off the rolling hill, I came down and here was a car and 2 or 3 guys over there digging. They had lanterns and it was just about dark I'm a kid and I go aver and I'm standing there looking around to see what they are doing. I don't know if I asked them any questions or not, but they ran me off. I went up and told my dad and he said, "Well, we'll keep watching them." Well, they dug and dug and dug and I supposedly went to bed and didn't think anything more about it.

The next morning there was an area, as I recall, maybe 20 x 20 feet square, with a foot or so of the loose soil taken off and moved to the outside of the square. In the center was a hole maybe 2 x 2 feet in diameter and about 2 or 3 feet deep. It evidently proved somewhere along the line somebody had stolen something and buried it. Whether it was those guys who did it, or whether it was a family or not [I don't know], but the part that I'm telling you is a true story; I saw it.

There's another incident I remember. There was a golf club factory in Goldfield. I don't know who put up the money, but I think one of the men was secretary of the Goldfield Deep Mines. It was called Novac Golf Club and a friend of ours was the machinist. The clubs were all handmade and the idea was that you had one handle, and the different heads, so they screwed on. That's all you had, instead of handles and clubs and all that. Evidently it wasn't what they wanted and it didn't go over. I don't know of anybody who would have one of those.

RM: How long was the factory there?

AB: I can't tell you. But as you go into Goldfield from Tonopah you make a turn to the left and go down the main street. It used to be the Cedar Street School, which is now the Public Library. They were making the golf clubs in that building.

And when I lived in Tonopah, I can remember when they shot off the first above-ground atomic explosion at the Test Site. There were maybe 3 carloads of us. We got the finalization that it was going to be carried out, so we drove on Highway 6 to the east of Tonopah about 49 miles to what they call the Warm Springs Summit. It was in the wee, small hours of the morning. We sat there and waited for that shot to go off, and we could see the fire and the mushroom cloud.

RM: Were you looking down Reveille Valley?

AB: Yes, down Reveille Valley. We stayed there some length of time and I can remember talking about that brown cloud, which was coming over the Reveille Valley and kind of towards Fallinis', over in that area.

RM: You could follow it coming up the range. What did you think about that?

AB: Naturally we thought it was a terrific thing. Nobody at that time realized the effects that the radiation would have. We just didn't think it was dangerous. It was an explosive; that's all.

RM: Al, you just mentioned that you had some memories of the Reed ranch out in the Kawich area, and of the packing house that the United Cattle and Packing Company had in Goldfield.

AB: Yes, I knew the Reeds - Helen Reed and Florence Reed and O.K. Reed - I knew the parents. The boy, little O.K., can along later. He was quite a bit younger than Helen and Florence. I knew the area. Gold Reed and all through that country which is now on the bombing range was part of their cattle operation. I guess it went clear up past the Monitor Valley Ranch. It probably went into Paiute Mesa, because Ray Harris used to tell me about taking cattle down there for the packers - the United Land and Cattle Company - and [being] up on that mesa. I said, "What about water?" He said there was no problem for feed and water. He said there were holes in the basalt, and they'd fill up with water whenever it would rain or storm, and the cattle would get their water there.

They had a packing house in Goldfield. In fact, they had established corrals and watering troughs around the Goldfield area. Some of them are still there and evidently in use today. They had a slaughterhouse there and in my time the man who ran it was named Johnson. This was in the late '20s. Johnson had a son by the name of Kenneth and we would play basketball together. He used to live with his dad and he'd run into Goldfield and practice basketball and then run back to the slaughterhouse, which was a good mile or mile-and-a-half.

RM: Where was the slaughterhouse located?

AB: It was located southwest of the graveyard about a half a mile in a kind of canyon in the basalt rocks there. They had a well and I can remember as a kid being at the slaughterhouse and the cowboys bringing the cows in, right off the range, and putting them in the corrals at the slaughterhouse.

Mr. Johnson was on the slaughterhouse floor. It was just a tin and wooden building, and they'd run the cattle in the chute, and there would be a man up there with an ax or sledgehammer, double-jack, and he'd hit them in the forehead, right between the eyes, and of course they'd die. They would just open a gate and chute and they'd slide right down into the slaughterhouse and he'd have the chain block - this was all hand-operated -and he'd hook them on and start then. He'd hang them up and start skinning then, getting the skin off the first thing, and then he'd wash them down and gut then, and halve them and all that. And they had an ice house there; they made ice and put then in a refrigerated roan for storage. RM: Was the meat used locally?

AB: I don't know how far their market went. It probably was used locally.

CHAPTER SIX

RM: Did you know O.K. Reed?

AB: I remember seeing him. I remember the boy, little O.K. He was a pretty boy, if I'm not mistaken, with blond, curly hair

RM: Did you ever get out to the ranch?

AB: No. The only thing I remember in that area that early was a man in Goldfield named Ed McLean who had a Model-T truck. He was in the hauling business, such as it was then, and somebody (I don't know where it came from) got the idea that that area around Gold Reed was the same type of country that the black Karakul sheep were raised in. If I'm not mistaken, the Karakul sheep had a real fine coat on then. [The breed is a kind of Asiatic broad-tailed sheep, and the newborn lambs have a curly black coat.] They were black and had a sack underneath their tail where they stored food and water to live in this desert country. [The breed] may have been from Pakistan, but I'm not sure about that. They were used at that time for expensive coats, which is what the ladies wanted. They brought a number of these sheep into Goldfield and this fellow hauled then out there and I went with him.

They made a blunder, I guess, because when we got out there and unloaded the sheep the ewes were coming into heat. And they were really upset. They didn't know what to do because they figured that was too much of a hardship in a new country. In the back of this truck - it was probably a 3/4-ton Model-T - he had a padding of belting that they used to use in the mines. The belt was made out of composition rubber and it would turn the compressors and whatever, [of] different sizes and thicknesses. It was in the back of that truck so the sheep wouldn't slide all over. These guys didn't know what to do, and somebody came up with the idea that [since] they had this sheeting and they had some rope they would put 47condoms on the rams.

RM: No kidding

AB: That's the truth. They cut a piece of this belting, shaped it to the stomach, and then they tied it up over their back and around with rope, so that if a ram got the idea of fooling with a female, he'd hit that thing and get out of the idea.

I never knew what happened to the sheep - whether they died off, or left, or whether there are still some of them there. I do know that in Goldfield the Serbians always had goats. They got the milk and the meat and all that. Goats can live any place. I know one particular time a herd of 50 goats left in the middle of the night or sometime, and they never did find them. Well, I know that some of them ended up in the Stonewall country, because 20 years ago I saw a nanny and a kid up on the cliffs out there.

RM: So there are wild goats out in those hills from goats that just got loose?

AB: Yes.

RM: But you don't know what happened to those black sheep?

AB: No. But I remember that very well; I went with the man. And of course, being a kid, that was a fine outing.

RM: And where did you take them, again?

AB: Out in that Gold Reed country someplace - way out there in the desert. RM: Al, you've got a settlement sheet from the American Smelting and Refining Company. Could you briefly describe it?

AB: The company that owned the property were the ones that got the settlement sheet. We had the lease on a certain block of ground. The Goldfield Deep Mines Company was the owner of the property, or they had it at that particular time, whether it was owned or leased. It was on the Florence claims. The ore went to American Smelting and Refining Company by rail. For example, the freight advance was $9.30 per ton from Goldfield to Garfield, Utah. It shows the number of the railroad car, and gold at that time was $31.825.

RM: That was what they paid you?

AB: That's what they paid us.

RM: On $35 gold.

AB: That's right. It shows that the Goldfield gold, which it was, was over .900 fine. And it goes on to show the base price and the different charges, 10 percent assessment over 20 gross maximum 2 1/2 labor increase 4137 maximum 50, sample 25 cents.

RM: What does "labor increase" mean?

AB: Well, you see, you've got a total there of 525, and the sample 25 cents, plus increase in labor, gives you total deductions of $5 per ton. So you have $5, and the freight advance, $9.30 .

RM: Oh, these are your treatment charges, plus the freight.

AB: The sampling is down here as $23.61, and the freight advance . .it's all on there.

RM: Another item you have is a copy of a letter from the company breaking the figures out.

AB: Right. It's a copy of the final settlement between the company and the leaser.

RM: So the gross was $2,300 and the net was $1,500.

AB: Yes. You see, they had a sliding scale, values of ore, royalty to be paid up to $15 was so much, $15 to $30 so much. We just got over into the 30 percent bracket, which kicked us pretty good. The Deep Mines Company got 30 percent royalty, which was $700, plus $10 for power for hoisting the ore, less 5 percent reserve for bullion tax.

RM: Oh, there was a bullion tax?

AB: Oh, yes. It's been there for many, many years. Whether it ever got to the state or not, I don't know.

RM: And it was you and your partner Barlow?

AB: Bill Barlow. He was older than I was. The balance was $1,500, so divided by 2 . . . $700 and some dollars apiece. That's the time I bought the brand new 1937 Ford car for $700.

INDEX

above-ground atomic test,

Adams, Mr.

Airacobras,

Alkali Springs,

alum mine

American Smelting and Refining Co

Anaconda

Arizona,

Arlington Hotel

Aston, M. B.,

Baird, Ben,

Bakersfield, CA,

bank building,

Bank of America

Barley Creek ranch,

Barlow, B. I

Barlow, W. H.,

Barnes, Dick

Barstow, CA

basalt,

basketball,

Beatty, NV,

Bell Refining Co

Big Pine, CA,

Bishop, CA,

Blackjack (person),

Blue Gem Mine,

Boni, Ermand,

bootleg joints,

boxing arena,

The Family of A. N. Bradshaw

and Sarah T. Bradshaw

Bradshaw, Mrs. Albert,

Bradshaw, Albert Sr.

Bradshaw, Francis

Bradshaw, George,

Bradshaw, Lisa,

Bradshaw, Marguerite C. Enright

Bradshaw, Mark,

Bradshaw family, misc.,

Bradshaw mill

Brown, Judge,

Brown Parker's Garage

Bush, Johnny,

caches of gold,

Camp Douglas,

Candelaria, NV

cattle,

Cavanaugh, John,

Cavanaugh Brothers,

Cavanaugh family

Chrysler Airflow

Cirac, Mr.,

Cirac Valley,

Claremont mine,

Cloverdale

coal

Cocamunga-Long Springs,

Combination Mines

copper

"Copper Queen of Nevada,"

Cord, E. L.,

county shop

Coyote Bill,

Crow Springs, NV,

Cuprite, NV,

Curless family, 8

Dago Joe,

Dallas, TX, 1

Delta Gas

Dentweiler, Mr.,

Depression,

diatomaceous earth,

diphtheria epidemic

Divide, NV,

drayage animals

Duffy, Martin,

dust (silica

Dyer, George,

Earl, Mr.,

Easter Blue Mine,

Eastern Exploration Co.,

Elks' Lodge,

Ely, NV,

England,

Englishman,

Enright, Bill,

Enright, Tom

Fabbi family,

Fallini family,

Felis, Mr.,

Finlander

Fishlake Valley,

Florence Mine,

Florence Mining

Fourth of July

Frazier's Well,

Fulton, John M

Garfield, UT,

General Petroleum Corp

Gerard Trust Co.,

German (person

goats

gold,

gold coins,

Gold Reed, NV,

Goldfield, NV,

Goldfield Consolidated Mill

Goldfield Consolidated Mines,

Goldfield Deep Mines Co. of Nevada,

Goldfield Hotel,

Goldfield life style,

Goldfield Meat and Grocery,

Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune,

golf club factory,

Great Lakes Carbon,

Guggenheim family

gymnasium,

Harris, Ray,

Harwood, TX, 1

Hays-Monet,

Hecla,

ice house,

Immigrant Pass,

Jeffrey, Glen,

Jeffrey, Harold,

Jepperson, Mr.,

Jester, "Happy Days,"

Jester, Mr.,

Johnson-Jeffries fight,

Johnson, Kenneth,

Johnson, Mr

"Jumbo,"

Justice of the Peace,

Kalen, Pious,

Karakul sheep,

Kawich area,

Klondike, NV,

L&L Motel

L-P Pas,

Las Vegas, NV,

Laub, Mr.,

Laub's Meat and Grocery,

lead,

leasing,

Lida, NV,

Los Angeles, CA,

Luning, NV,

Malapais Mountains,

Manhattan, NV,

McCracken, Bambi,

McLean, Ed,

Mellon, Jess,

Mellon Camp,

Merger mine,

Merlin, Jim,

Mexican (person

Mexico,

Michigan,

Millers, NV,

milling

Mina, NV

Mineral County,

mining,

Missouri,

Mizpah Hotel,

Mobil bulk plant,

Mobil Oil Co., 25,

Model T,

Monitor Valley Ranch,

National Distilleries,

Nevada,

Nevada Historical Society

Nevada Test Site,

New York

New York Canyon,

nicknames

Nolting, S. H.,

Northern Saloon,

Novac Golf Club,

Occidental College

Cason, Olie

Paiute Mesa,

Pakistan

Panhandle Pete,

Pargas,

Parker, Orlo,

Point Able,

Poker Bob,

Polins family,

Potts, Jeanne,

price of gold,

Prohibition,

promoting

prospector,

Public Library,

Rabbit Springs,

radiation,

railroads,

Ralston Valley,

Ransom (report on mining history),

Red Lick, NV,

red-light district,

Reed, Florence,

Reed, Helen

Reed, O.K.,

Reed family,

Reed ranch,

Reno, NV,

Reveille Valley,

Riley Section,

Rodger's ranch

Rodger's Well,

Round Mountain,

royalties

Royston

Sacony Vacuum

Sacramento, CA,

Salisbury Valley

San Francisco, CA,

Santa Fe Club

Santa Maria,

Scarlantini, Angelo,

"Scotty the Pig

Selby, CA,

Serbian people,

Serrias, Fermina

service men,

settlement sheet,

Shell Oil,

"Shit-house Shorty,"

shoemaker,

Sigmund, Mary,

silver,

Silver Bow, NV,

Silver Peak, NV,

Silvers, Albert,

Simmons, Mr.,

Sixteen-to-One Mine

slaughterhouse,

smelting

Smoky Valley,

Sodaville, NV

Sorhover, Martin,

Spanish

Standard Oil,

Stonewall,

Sundog School,

Tanner, Mr

Tawney, Mr.,

tax,

Texas,

Tonopah, NV,

Tonopah Army Air Base,

Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad,

Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad

Tonopah Club,

Tonopah fire chief,

turquoise

Union Oil,

United Cattle and Packing Company

United States,

United States government,

University of Nevada, Las Vegas,

vegetables,

WPA

Wallace, Wayne,

Walsh, Bert,

Warm Springs,

Warm Springs Summit,

Washington,

water

Western Knapp,

Westgard Pass,

Wike, James,

Winfield, Mr.,

Wingfield, George,

"Women in Mining

women in mining,

World War I

World War II,

Zimmerman Ranch,

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

Index