OF SAGEBRUSH & SLOT MACHINES This Curious Place Called Nevada Second Edition Edited by: Richard O. Davies Scott E. Casper
Cover photograph courtesy of Ron Chapple/Corbis Images. Copyright 2007 by Pearson Custom Publishing Copyright 1997 by Simon & Schuster Custom Publishing All rights reserved. This copyright covers material written expressly for this volume by the editor/s as well as the compilation itself. It does not cover the individual selections herein that first appeared elsewhere. Permission to reprint these has been obtained by Pearson Custom Publishing for this edition only. Further reproduction by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, must be arranged with the individual copyright holders noted. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 0-536-38687-0 2007300058 EC/HA Please visit our web site at www.pearsoncustom.com PEARSON CUSTOM PUBLISHING 501 Boylston Street, Suite 900, Boston, MA 02116 A Pearson Education Company
Copyright Acknowledgments Grateful acknowledment is made to the following sources for permission to reprint material copyrighted or controlled by them: Nevada: Beautiful Desert of Buried Hopes, by Anne Martin, reprinted from The Nation, July 26, 1922. Mining Illusions: The Case of Rawhide, Nevada, by Peter Goin and C. Elizabeth Raymond, reprinted from Changing Mines in America (2004), by permission of The Center for American Places. Twentieth Century Marvel, by Joseph E. Stevens, reprinted from Hoover Dam: An American Adventure (1988), by permission of the University of Oklahoma Press. Prelude, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, reprinted from City of Trembling Leaves (1945), Sun Dial Press. Excerpt from Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis Junior, by Sammy Davis Junior and Jane and Burt Boyar (1965), Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Excerpt from Fighting Back: A Life in the Struggle for Civil Rights, by James McMillan (1997), reprinted by permission of the University of Nevada Oral History Program. States Rights Enterprise, by Gilman M. Ostrander, reprinted from Nevada: The Great Rotten Borough, 1859 1964 (1966), Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Musings of a Native Son, by William A. Douglass, reprinted from East of Eden, West of Zion: Essays on Nevada, edited by Wilbur S. Shepperson (1989), the University of Nevada Press. Copyright 1989 by Wilbur S. Shepperson. A-Bombs in the Backyard: Southern Nevada Adapts to the Nuclear Age, 1951 1963, by A. Costandina Titus, reprinted from the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly (winter 1983). Nevada Red Blues, by Adrian C. Louis, reprinted from Among the Dog Eaters (1992), West End Press. Nevada No Longer and Hawthorne, by Shaun T. Griffen, reprinted from Bathing in the Ashes: Poems (1999), the University of Nevada Press. Tidings, by Gary Short, reprinted from Flying Over Sonny Liston: Poems (1996), the University of Nevada Press. Excerpt from Earthtones: A Nevada Album, by Ann Ronald (1995), the University of Nevada Press. Copyright 1995 by the University of Nevada Press. Excerpt from Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twentieth Century, by Hal Rothman (2002), reprinted by permission of Routledge, a division of Taylor & Francis Group. Copyright 2002 by Hal Rothman.
Table of Contents Introduction................................................... 1 This Curious Place Called Nevada First Meeting of Piutes and Whites (1883).................... 16 Sarah Winnemucca from Roughing It (1871)......................................... 30 Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) from The Conquest of the Arid West (1900)......................... 43 William E. Smythe from Jeffries vs. Johnson (1910).............................. 51 Arthur Ruhl Nevada: Beautiful Desert of Buried Hopes (1922)............... 59 Anne Martin Mining Illusions: The Case of Rawhide, Nevada (2004)......... 69 Peter Goin and C. Elizabeth Raymond Twentieth Century Marvel (1988)............................. 80 Joseph E. Stevens Prelude from City of Trembling Leaves (1945).................... 92 Walter Van Tilburg Clark from Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (1965)........... 101 Sammy Davis, Jr. from Fighting Back: A Life in the Struggle for Civil Rights (1997).. 114 James B. McMillan v
vi Table of Contents States Rights Enterprise, from Nevada: The Great Rotten Borough (1966)............................... 120 Gilman M. Ostrander Musings of a Native Son (1989)............................ 144 William A. Douglass A-Bombs in the Backyard: Southern Nevada Adapts to the Nuclear Age, 1951 1963 (1983)........................ 160 A. Costandina Titus Nevada Red Blues, (1992); Hawthorne ; Nevada No Longer, (1999), and Tidings, (1996)............. 173 Adrian C. Louis, Shaun T. Griffin, and Gary Short from Earthtones (1995)....................................... 180 Ann Ronald Las Vegas on the Eve of the New Millenium, from Neon Metropolis (2002).................................. 184 Hal Rothman Excerpts from the Nevada Constitution....................... 202 Notes..................................................... 207