ORAL HISTORIES

The family ranch in the Grapevines, and gathering pine nuts there; Indians leave Beatty when the T&T departs. Work at Janda Ribbons; raising a family; views on the nuclear waste repository; putting children through college.

Harry Springer's Nevada brucite discovery; first impressions of Nye County; a terrible snowstorm; Wild Horse Dick in the roundhouse at Mina. Basic Magnesium's brucite camp in the 1930s; recruiting labor and cooks; locating magnesite claims; a move to Maple Grove, Ohio, while the government ran a magnesite operation during World War II; Basic Magnesium's purchase of the government facilities and a post-war return to Gabbs; Wells Cargo; a discussion of Howard P. Eells; the geology of brucite. The Hanson family; running for the Nevada state assembly and working for the successful goal of incorporating Gabbs; a deputy to Sheriff Bill Thomas; community life in Gabbs after World War II. Basic Magnesium is sold to Combustion Engineering; other mining in the Gabbs area; memories of Ione in the late 1930s; the Ichthyosaur State Park;

Working in the farming business as a bookkeeper for Mel Carberry; moving with Carberry to Pahrump and acquiring land there; moving into the real estate business in Pahrump; the properties originally acquired by Carberry; proving up Desert Land Entries. Acquiring, developing, and subdividing land in Pahrump; the Harris subdivisions and their buyers; Tim Hafen's role in Hollis's real estate work; Pahrump as a supportive community; remarks on Calvada; the cotton industry in Pahrump; growing different crops, such as mint; remembering Joe Kelly; the Harris family's role in building a hospital in Pahrump; Mel Carberry's influence on Hollis's life; Daniel Harris's career and return to Pahrump; Bob Ruud builds a house; remembering various Pahrump residents.

Teaching in Nevada - Goldfield, Eureka, then Smoky Valley; living and teaching at Darrough's Hot Springs, then McLeods', and a brief sojourn in Oregon; a return to Smoky Valley - ten years of teaching in Round Mountain - "the best ten years of my life"; memories of area residents and of weekends on area ranches; visits to area mires. Memories of Smoky Valley and of Florence Ellis; life in Round Mountain; the snowstorm of 1937; further memories of people in Round Mountain and on Smoky Valley ranches.

Family background of Mayme and her husband; going to school at the Carson Indian School; a short basketball career; meeting Albert Hooper; a working honeymoon in Death Valley; learning Shoshoni; ranching in Monitor Valley; moving to Tonopah. Indian plants; riding the train to Tonopah; life on a cattle ranch; horseback riding.

From a teamster in Texas to a California and Arizona farmer; purchasing the Pahrump Ranch; the Pahrump Valley in the 1930s; pioneering in growing cotton; a hog-raising project ends in disaster;. a return to California and a later return to the Pahrump Valley; the valley in the 1940s. Work for C.B. Dickey on the Pahrump Ranch; the Mizpah Farm operation; mining gypsum and talc; a career with Cal-Vada; state land and homestead land

Memories of childhood and youth in Manhattan; leasing in the gulch below Manhattan; the geology of placer gold; sinking shafts in the placer; cloudbursts and mountain canyons; the working of the Natomas dredge; discussion of mining the placer gold in Manhattan. The sluice system and its water supply; the hardrock mines of Manhattan; the town of Manhattan in the 1930s; serving in the marines in World War II; heavy equipment work; mining quicksilver behind Round Mountain and the economics of the quicksilver market; building roads and leach pads; Manhattan after the dredge. Contract roadwork for mining companies and reclamation work on old mining roads; high-tech mining methods and changes in attitudes on the environment; on the 1872 Nevada mining law and state's rights; present-day large-scale mining and mining equipment; gas stations in Round Mountain and Manhattan in days past.

Laraine discusses her parents and the Bowman family's move from Moapa to Pahrump; she discusses her parents and other family members; her aunt Loretta's marriage; the Bowmans settle on the Manse Ranch; memories of living on the ranch as a child; how the Manse property was divided among the Bowman children; a discussion of some of the ranches in Pahrump; the Manse Ranch springs; remembering workers and their families on the Manse Ranch. Atomic testing on the Nevada Test Site; memories of grade school days in Pahrump and in Logandale, with upper grades in Las Vegas and Shoshone; college years, then working as a teacher and starting a family; returning to the Pahrump Valley and teaching there in various grades; being a science teacher. Memories of various people in Pahrump, further recollections of the Manse Ranch: horseback riding as a youngster; various childhood friends; the role cotton played in Pahrump Valley in the late 1960s; the Bowman family's role in the development of the LDS community in Pahrump Valley.

Dad Fairbank's early days; Betty Lisle at Fairbanks Springs; life in Annabella. Fairbanks Mercantile in various locales; Charlie Brown; Grandma Fairbanks' arrival at Fairbanks Springs; Betty Fairbanks meets John Quincy Lisle; Dad Fairbank's character; the Lisle farm in Hayward. The Clay Camp; going away to school. Grandmother Fairbanks' character; education; Betty Lisle's Birthday; Betty and John Q. Lisles' characters; Celesta and Deke meet and marry. Camping trips to the Pahrump Ranch from Shoshone; recollections of Kazarang and Pop Buol; bootlegging; newspaper work during the Chicken Ranch bombing; Dad Fairbanks' memories of Johnny Tecopa and the Younts; learning about the old days from Bob Lee and Della White Fisk

Early life in the Pahrump Valley; relatives of Cynthia Lynch and her parents; the definition of a "scattered Indian"; living with and on the land - hunting and learning about and describing plants used for food and medicine; memories of C.B. Dickey and others; an early trip to Las Vegas; living and working in Las Vegas; marrying Charles; memories of ancestors - Hungry Bill, Panamint Tam, Chief Tecopa, Whispering Ben and others. Other early area Indian residents; discussion of language; memories of the valley in an earlier, unspoiled time; ownership of the land; the children and their careers; planting a garden; learning to paint; plants used for food and medicine; the meaning of "Pahrump"; a plaque to Chief Tecopa