Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1932-07-17

~ ROSPECTORS in Nevada and Arizona
soon will be seeing a new mirage on the
horizon-the trembling reflection of an
attractive little city. with red-tiled adj
ministration building and bungalows, a
well shaded park, green lawns, busy
shopping district and even an aviation land
ing field.
Boulder City, Uncle Sans model town" at
the site of Hoover Dam, will be going full blast
this Summer, and anybody who sees this unique
and attractive place reflected in the desert
skies will have the urge to 60 and take look
at the original
How to care for the necessary working pop
ulation was one of the first problems to come
up in the long and careful preliminary study
of the Boulder Canyon project. Twenty-Five
hundred men, from engineers to construction
'stiffs" who do the heroic, but unpublicized,
work of blasting, tunneling and hauling In an
inferno of Summer heat, will be the average
force on the job. 1t will take six and one-half
years to complete the project. Men could not
be asked to live in tents makeshift shacks
for such length of time; and many would
want to bring their families. There must be
living quarters, schools and amusements not too
far from the of operations. Yet from
the sullen gorge of the Colorado River to Las
Vegas the nearest established town, was 80
long miles, with nothing but waste Of sage
brush in between.
The answer We'll build ideal city
close to the site of the dam" Architects, land
on plans. Lawyers drafted city regulations, in
which special attention paid to foiling the
unregenerate.
Nevada's wide-open laws, especially with re-
gard to gambling, were considered several shades
too liberal. A man who has been up all night
"bucking the tiger" and who has shot the last
dollar of his weekly wage at the roulette wheel
hardly be in fit mental condition to run
steam shovel or set off the huge blasts OF ex-
plosives which now send showers Of rock into
the Grand Canyon.
This question of civic control was really more
difficult than the material problems concern
ing paving, sanitation and landScaplng. How
was the fat pay roll of the Six Companies. Inc.
the private corporation carrying On the puohc
work, to be kept from going into the Golfers OF
gamblers, bootleggerS and honkey-tOnk pro-
prietors? Nevada has its own ideas about the
regulation of human conduct by law; it believes
pretty much in leaving the matter to the in
divi5ual conscience. Accordingly, it has legal
lied gambling and will p-ecent a nicely in
dentured certificate of divorce to anybody who
lives in the State for six weeks.
Boulder Canyon could not be lifted bodily
out of Nevada and deposited in some other
State whose laws run more in accordance With
conventional ideas. So the best minds OF sew
eral departments at Official Washington COM
bned their talents in making Boulder City
citadel of virture in the mics Of wilderness
Of sagebrush and sin.
FIRST, all land Immediately adjoining the
site of Boulder City was Withdrawn from
public entry. This has created Government
reservation, approximating 100 square miles, Of
which the town is the center. At the edge of
the reservation on the well paved highway
which leads from the bright lights of Las
Vegas deputy United States marshal halts
all buses, private vehicles and pedestrians.
TTplc will
Six Companies employment headquarters in
Las Vegas, showing you have been hired for
work on the dam, or unless you can establish
to a deputy's satisfaction that you are not
card sharp and not trans porting liquor, you
are turned back. And it is publicly given out
that any bootleggers, gamblers or Other violators
of Boulder City's moral code will be sorry they
visited Uncle Sans domain
Almost the first building erected within the
reservation was the police headquarters. Every
car that seeks to enter the city is searched for
liquor, firearms. munitions, explosives and mar
cotics-and since visitors arrive at the rate of
100 day on week days and 500 Sundays,
this is no small task.
But Nevada, with its eyes that $10,000-a-
day pay roll, has cast its lures to the very con-
fines of the Government reservation. The
Tannhauser who wanders out of Boulder City
will find that it is distant journey to the
lures of Venusberg. Within sight of the
deputy marshal who halted my vehicle at the
reservation line few weeks ago was a pre-
tentiouS casino (modern slang for the honkey-
toni of frontier days. with bar, dance floor
and gambling paraphernalia. AT night 20 or
80 entertainers, mostly girls gave floor show
which would keep any New York night club
patron awake.
put the Boulder City resident among the bright
lights and gambling clubs of Las Vegas, q city