Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SLICE OF HISTORY: Firmly Planted Roots

Charlene Cox Cruze's family played big role in shaping Las Vegas Valley

Charlene Cruze, left, reminisces over a family photo album with her aunt, Jetta Oakeson, whose husband worked for Lewis Cox and helped build roads in Nevada and the Southwest. Both women live in Las Vegas. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

At the cusp of the Las Vegas centennial -- which will be celebrated Sunday -- Charlene Cox Cruze looks back on her family history and concludes, "my ancestors' footprints are all over this valley."

Cruze was born in 1941 in Las Vegas "in the old Las Vegas Hospital on Ninth Street," she notes. A lifetime resident, she is a 1959 graduate of Las Vegas High School.

But her familial ties to Las Vegas date back more than 100 years, well before the 1905 railroad auction that launched the city.

Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Edison Barney, was assigned to the Mormon mission that had built the adobe Las Vegas fort in 1855. He arrived at the fort in about 1857 -- mainly worked on a lead-mining experiment at Mount Potosi -- and left when the church shut down the mission by 1858. A remnant of the fort still stands, near Cashman Center, 850 Las Vegas Blvd. North.

Barney returned to the St. George, Utah, area, where he helped build the church's temple, which was dedicated in 1877. He also worked in those pre-car days as a teamster, driving freight wagons drawn by animal teams

Cruze's paternal grandfather, Jedidiah Cox, who was a teamster with carpenter skills, made his way from Southern Utah to Las Vegas in 1905, where he attended the Las Vegas land auction. He then worked on crews that put up buildings in the new town, as well as its railroad depot, which went into service in 1906.

"When they heard the Union Pacific was going to focus in on Water Stop 17 ... (and) make it a town, my grandfather saw the opportunity to put his skills as carpenter and teamster to work," says Cruze, 63. She is referring to Las Vegas by its internal railroad designation and to the railroad by its later name. In 1905, it was still known as the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad.

According to family records and stories, Cox traveled with his new bride, Rachel -- Barney's granddaughter -- to Las Vegas for the auction. He wanted to buy land, but Rachel squelched the idea, according to Cruze.

"My grandmother was appalled at the riffraff and the disgusting filth of this town," is how Cruze retells her grandmother's opinion. "There was no sanitation, the only running water was the creek," which ran from the present water district headquarters downhill, past the fort to the Colorado River. The new Las Vegas was "just full of rotty bars and brothels and two-bit people -- miners and railroad workers."

Rachel went back to Southern Utah after she got pregnant with their first child: Cruze's father, Lewis, who was born in 1906. Rachel's husband stayed on in Las Vegas to finish some construction jobs.

Eventually he, too, returned to the St. George area, where he worked as a teamster. When the automobile came on, and a road system started developing, Jedidiah Cox acquired a Shell Oil franchise in the 1920s. He served traffic on the Arrowhead Trail, an early highway that went through St. George and Las Vegas.

When Lewis Cox reached adulthood, he, too, got into freighting in Southern Utah, by truck instead of wagon. But he got wind in the late 1920s the federal government would be building a dam across the Colorado River near Las Vegas. So after marrying Annie Campbell in June 1927, he moved with her to Southern Nevada by November that same year. He obtained a job with the Utah Construction Co., which was helping assess sites for the dam.

Utah Construction became one of the six firms in Six Companies Inc., a consortium that would build the massive dam.

Upon their arrival, Cruze's parents camped at "Vegas Camp, at Washington (Avenue) and Main Street, right across from the old Anderson Dairy. It was just above the Mormon fort," Cruze explains. "Back in that time, you probably just pulled in and camped" for free.

Unlike Cruze's grandmother, Rachel Cox, who abhorred Las Vegas, Annie Cox loved it. The town was then 12 years old. "My mom was a little different personality than my grandmother. Mom thought it was a pretty glamorous town. My mom was a beautiful, beautiful woman who probably got whistled at and googled over," Cruze says.

Lewis Cox, in addition to hauling equipment and building roads with Utah Construction for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's dam project, also took on other jobs when his schedule allowed.

"There might be a break (in dam construction), where they'll need him again in six weeks. During that six weeks, he may have gone somewhere else and done a job," Cruze says. Road building was big during the period, as automobile technology had improved and Americans wanted a long-distance alternative to train travel.

Rather than stay behind while Lewis was on the road, Annie Cox decided to tag along. She had him build a permanent mobile home on a truck flatbed, which the couple towed and lived in wherever Lewis was working. By comparison, most road workers lived onsite in tents or temporary, flimsy shacks.

The Coxes used Las Vegas as their home base, their daughter explains. "Everything was temporary work in the West. It was transient labor" that built the railroads and roads.

By 1931, Lewis Clark, doing business as Cox Trucking Co., had obtained what Cruze believes to be the first Interstate Commerce Commission permit issued in Nevada. His company built roads throughout Nevada, Arizona, Utah and California. "He went into the Arizona Strip area of Northern Arizona ... He did roads at the North Rim (of the Grand Canyon), the Bryce Canyon area of Utah."

He also helped improve Route 66 in the Kingman, Ariz., area, did roadwork around Bodie, Calif., and built roads in central and northern Nevada, says Cruze, who has saved many documents from Cox Trucking, including contracts for these jobs.

But the couple settled down somewhat by 1941, when Cruze, their only child, was born. Cruze says in the same period her father also won a contract to pave the first runway for the Army gunnery range, which later became Nellis Air Force Base.

The Coxes bought land on Boston Street in Las Vegas, which now lies under the Stratosphere hotel and tower property. There they planted their formerly mobile home, and lived in it until they build a newer home alongside.

Growing up on Boston Street, Cruze was surrounded by the implements of her father's trade. He parked his fleet of trucks in the yard. Her swing set was built from an A-frame that Lewis had used to lift engines out of trucks he was repairing.

At about age 8 or 9, she remembers driving with him out to a gravel pit he owned near Nellis Air Force Base, which took on its present name in 1949. He needed to adjust the pit's conveyor belt, but somehow his sleeve got caught and the machinery pulled his arm in.

"It started to chew his arm up like hamburger," Cruze recalls. "He was finally able to jam it with something and stop and get his arm out. He got his shirt off and wrapped it, and told me I would have to drive and he would help me."

So at a young age, minus a driver's license, Cruze drove her father to the hospital on West Charleston Boulevard -- now University Medical Center -- for treatment.

"He just helped me a little bit with the steering. He never told me thank you or gave me a compliment. .... My dad was pretty cut and dried. My mom was the frilly, pretty one," she recalls.

Eventually Lewis and Annie divorced, remarried, then divorced permanently. But Annie Cox made her own mark in Las Vegas, too, according to Cruze.

"She worked at Ronzone's, one of the major department stores on Fremont Street," Cruze recounts. Ronzone's later became a Diamonds store, and then Dillards.

"She was an officially trained corsetier and fit prostheses for women who'd had breast cancer. ... What they got from the store she'd alter and customize. It was tradition in Las Vegas, you went down and my mother fit you in your first bra, including my kids."

Lewis Cox died in 1976, Annie Cox in 1994. Annie's sister, Jetta Oakeson, who married one of the men who worked for Lewis Cox, is still a Las Vegas resident.

Cruze is a mother of four, with four grandchildren and one great-grandchild. She incorporates her first-hand knowledge of Las Vegas into her business, Creative Adventures Limited. One of her services is to design and lead customized tours.

"My expertise is between Santa Fe, N.M., and San Francisco -- basically the Southwestern states," she says. But some of her favorite work is leading visitors on history tours in her own back yard, Las Vegas.