Sunday, March 06, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

'YOUNG LAS VEGAS, 1905-1931: BEFORE THE FUTURE FOUND US': Chapter Two

Railroad played major role in daily life of residents in company town

PHOTOS COURTESY OF UNLV LIBRARIES, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS All Special Collection photos are the property of University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries and cannot be reproduced without permission. A locomotive belches in this photograph from the early era of Las Vegas. Exact location and date are unknown. UNLV LIBRARIES, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS In this image shot about 1917, a column of train smoke leads the eye up Fremont Street to the rail depot. UNLV LIBRARIES, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS In 1928 a group of shop apprentices gathered for a photo in the Union Pacific rail shops, with Dion Stewart, an instructor, and several foremen. NEVADA STATE MUSEUM AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY A stationary train car served as a temporary rail depot until the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad built a permanent structure. Tents are visible in the background. UNLV LIBRARIES, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS All Special Collection photos are the property of University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries and cannot be reproduced without permission.

Early Las Vegas owed its very existence to the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad. The railroad had laid out the streets, was the largest employer, owned the visual landmarks that dominated the town -- the railroad yard's smokestack was the tallest structure in sight, its ice plant the biggest -- and delivered consumer necessities not produced locally. By controlling the water supply it also dictated the town's growth. In short, it touched all Las Vegans, whether they worked for the "road" or not.

Walter Bracken personified the railroad. In 1902 he came with the survey party that decided which spot would serve as a railroad center. In 1904 he moved to Southern Nevada, before the land auction. Bracken became the local agent not only for the railroad but also for the Las Vegas Land and Water Co., which the railroad created to develop the town and distribute water. One contemporary, Florence Boyer, described him as a cousin of William Clark, the copper baron and Montana senator who owned the railroad.

Bracken ruled with an iron hand, to all outward appearances. In reality, he was largely a figurehead who had to lobby for approval from superiors in other cities before he made decisions, even the most trivial or clear-cut.

In 1909, Bracken requested permission to keep a supply of pipes on hand in case one of the town's wooden water pipes burst, but he was turned down. So in 1910 when a water line broke, Bracken had to temporarily shut off the water to an entire block of houses occupied by rail workers while waiting for supplies to arrive.

In some ways, Bracken had a luckless job. Friction was inherent between the Land and Water Co. and the Los Angeles-based railroad, which still owned the town's Big Springs and all water rights. The railroad shops were guaranteed clear, softened water because sand or other impurities could damage the trains' steam equipment. But residents had to gripe loudly to improve the quality of drinking water.

"The body of a lizard had come out of the faucet of a Company (owned) house and bugs also were polluting the water," according to a 1924 complaint that author Florence Lee Jones reported in her 1975 book "Water, A History of Las Vegas." Bracken admitted fish less than an inch long sometimes made it through the water system's filters, "but even this cannot in any way injure the water or make it filthy."

When Sen. Clark in 1921 sold the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad -- it had dropped "San Pedro" from its name in 1916 -- Bracken stayed on with the buyer, the Union Pacific Railroad Co. "Decisions on problems, which Las Vegans had grumbled about in the past because of the delay between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, now had to take a longer route," Jones wrote. "The Union Pacific hierarchy in New York City was concerned primarily with the revenue to be derived."

The railroad was paternalistic; its workers received some benefits that ordinary townspeople lacked. Direct deposit of paychecks to banks, at employee request, already existed in Las Vegas in the 1920s. In 1925, Bracken implored the Union Pacific general manager by memo not to give up the practice: "Were a great many of these checks to be given to the individual at first, in my opinion, they would be lost over the gambling table before the wife had a chance to obtain any part of the same."

Free rail transportation was another big perk. Ed Von Tobel Jr., who was born in Las Vegas in 1913 and worked in the family's lumber business, was envious. "They could get a pass. It was easy for them to get out of town when it got too hot," he said in 2004. "They'd go to Redondo Beach and rent a place on the beach and stay there very reasonably" for the summer.

The rail passes gave railroad families more shopping options, too. They could ride to California for big-ticket purchases. "They felt they could get a better price. Up to a certain amount (of weight), they could ship it back for free," Von Tobel remembered.

The Land and Water Co. also built a tract of single-story cottages for exclusive rental or purchase by railroad families. Their construction, from 1909 to 1911, responded to a housing crunch created when the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake in 1909 expanded its repair facilities and workforce in Las Vegas.

Rail employees from other cities vied to get a house in Las Vegas. The more expensive model was 912 square feet, with three bedrooms, a kitchen, living room and bathroom. It rented for $20 a month. A two-bedroom model was also available. In 1923 the railroad was selling the larger model for $2,100.

Other apparent employee perks were designed to promote the railroad's interests.

Bracken pushed hard in 1923 for an employee social hall to serve as a healthier alternative to the saloons. By then a Union Pacific vice-president himself, Bracken defended the proposal to an official in Omaha, Neb.: "Gambling is a legalized profession in Nevada and the gambling halls operating here spare no expense in their efforts to entice men to their games. The gambling craze, or curse, is far more dangerous to us than either the social evil or rum shops. Men directly from their run or labors are enticed into games and can be found there when called, with little or no rest and in no condition to go out" on their next run. Certain forms of gambling were already legal before Nevada loosened its gambling laws in 1931. But Bracken could also have been concerned about illegal games, which sometimes took place.

He even argued for a swimming pool, which was a luxury for Union Pacific halls of the day, to compensate for the heat. Las Vegans who weren't railroaders took siestas, he noted. "They do not make any pretence of working very much during the middle of the day while the summer season is on, but it is necessary that the railroad employes (sic) work continuously at their respective occupations irrespective of weather conditions." The railroad never authorized a pool.

The company kept tabs on employees off the job, and on their relatives. "Engineer Liday is after us for reinstatement," W.H. Comstock, general manager of the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad, wrote to Bracken in 1918. "As it was reported to me once, he was an inveterate gambler and gambled all his money away, and his wife took in washing. Was this true?" Bracken wrote back that the Las Vegas City Commission had promised to crack down on all gambling, ending with a plug to rehire Liday. The outcome isn't known.

Naturally the railroad supervised its workforce closely to limit its legal liability in accidents. But it didn't necessarily set high standards in employee relations, especially if there was no state or federal oversight.

In 1921, fireman Fred Tisdial of Southern Nevada was on a run to Los Angeles when a water gauge exploded, sending shards into his eye. The injury permanently damaged his eyesight. In 1981, Tisdial's wife told a reporter the company never paid any compensation for his forced retirement. "They took care of the doctor bill, and bought him a pair of glasses, and that was it."

Health and safety precautions came slowly to the railroad, according to W. Wallace White, who worked for almost four decades in public health for the state of Nevada, starting in 1931.

"We were revolutionary, unreasonable when we wanted toilets on cabooses, a toilet on railroad cars, or we attempted to provide drinking water on a caboose. Now even into the '40s and '50s, the caboose water was in a barrel with a common dipper," White told an oral historian in 1968, referring to the U.S. rail industry as a whole. He described the time one worker fell off a moving car because "he was hanging over the edge using the toilet."

Because of the scale of its local operations, when the railroad suffered, Las Vegas also suffered. A 1910 flash flood ripped out 100 miles of San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake track to the north, near Caliente. Las Vegas was virtually marooned because trains to and from Utah ceased. Some rail workers were laid off, causing a slump in the local economy. Six months passed before the missing stretch was reconstructed, and full traffic resumed. In 1922, the town and railroad weathered another crisis: a rail strike.

Shortly after Union Pacific took control in 1921 from the company's exiting owner, it fired 60 men who worked in the Las Vegas railroad shop. Still smarting, Las Vegas shop workers readily joined a nationwide rail strike in July 1922. A week later, the first "scab" workers arrived. Locals disparagingly called the strikebreakers "scalies," possibly because they were breaking the pay scale.

During the strike, some trains ran late. The city's electric power was interrupted at one point, because the railroad generated the electricity. Von Tobel recalled going with other children during the day to watch strikers informally congregate downtown. "The men would be standing around on Fremont Street, and they'd be talking. We'd see what they were up to."

Strike violence also occurred. After a shooting on Union Pacific property, three men were arrested for carrying concealed weapons, and 15 others for unlawful assembly.

The strike ended in October 1922, with mixed results. Union Pacific announced it would diminish the scope of its shop in Las Vegas; an exodus of employees to company shops in Caliente and Los Angeles followed.

On the other hand, Union Pacific raised the pay for certain job descriptions. Reinhold Miller earned 70 cents an hour as a machinist in Las Vegas before the strike, he told a reporter in 1977. When Miller returned from California after the strike, his machinist pay had jumped to 90 cents an hour.

A behemoth inevitably throws its weight around. The railroad did just that in community affairs in early Las Vegas. As early as 1908, the railroad worried it was the obvious target for funding the Las Vegas school district. Land & Water Co. President C.O. Whittemore wrote to Bracken to protest a scheme he'd heard would "elect a school board who will proceed to build a fine big school house and saddle the greater part of the expense on the railroad."

When Southern Nevadans clamored for a new county, Clark County, to be split off from Lincoln County to the north, the railroad weighed in on the debate. "As the largest taxpayer in Lincoln County, the Railroad was concerned about whether the division into two counties would double its expenses," Jones' "Water" history noted. Once the railroad was satisfied its tab would not increase, it blessed the division, which took place in 1909.

The railroad's security officers -- commonly called the "bulls" -- sometimes threw their weight around town, too. Top railroad managers corresponded in 1925 about whether Special Officer Woody, whose first name was not mentioned, ought to be patrolling Block 16 with the Las Vegas chief of police. Block 16, the town's red light district, didn't belong to the railroad.

Woody's visits have "undoubtedly had a very great influence towards actions of many of our employees visiting that district," Bracken maintained. "I would suggest that he be instructed to visit Block 16 at any and all times that he may see fit."

But turnabout was not fair play. In a spat in 1927, railroad special officer W.J. McClement overruled the city police chief. McClement had ordered five hoboes away from the railyards, but Police Chief Robert E. Lake ordered them back to the small stream on Union Pacific property to wash up. McClement again ordered them off.

The chief "came to me in a very abrupt manner and demanded that I allow the hoboes to go wherever he sent them," McClement reported in writing to F.H. Knickerbocker, general manager for U.P.'s Los Angeles Salt Lake line. "I told Mr. Lake that we would run all the hoboes off the company property and that he could do as he pleased."

Next Sunday in Living: Miners and ranchers

The book and series are a joint project of the Review-Journal and its sister book-publishing company, Stephens Press, in recognition of Las Vegas' centennial year. The book will contain additional information, and many more pictures, about everyday life before legal gambling and Hoover Dam changed Las Vegas forever. The hardbound book will sell for $29.95 but prepaid copies may be reserved at $24.95 from http://www.stephenspress.com.