Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West

by Nies, Judith

  6“Event Annie”: Event Annie was an aboveground test in 1953 in which the military attempted to determine the feasibility of an atomic cannon for battlefield use. Two 280 mm cannons were brought to the Nevada Test Site from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, along with artillery crews, to test an atomic shell. On May 25, 1953, a cannon at Frenchman Flat fired an atomic shell with a yield of fifteen kilotons, marking the first, and last, use of a nuclear artillery shell. The cannon, nicknamed “Atomic Annie,” returned to Fort Sill. Event Annie was one of a series of tests that were responsible for nearly one-quarter of all radiation exposure to people and livestock that lived downwind of the test site. Many families and communities in the Intermountain West, along with test-site workers and military veterans, reported cancers, tumors, and degenerative diseases. The US military did not admit radioactive fallout from tests carried by westerly winds into rural Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. Author and activist Terry Tempest William’s book Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place tells of seeing the light from a nuclear test blast as a child while driving with her family in Utah. She describes herself as coming from “the clan of One-Breasted Women” because almost all the women in her family have come down with breast cancer, a result of Utah’s downwind exposure to fallout from nuclear tests.

  Another famous “event” was Apple-2, which involved dropping a twenty-nine-kiloton device from the top of a five-hundred-foot tower in Yucca Flat. An entire town and housing development were built around ground zero, using different materials and exteriors at differing distances, to test the aftereffects. Tours of the Nevada Test Site include the “Doomsday Town,” remains of houses, shelters, steel frames, a bank vault, and other structures. www.onlinenevada.org/articles/atmospheric-nuclear-testing-nevada-test-site#sthash.2Z7Gbxdj.dpuf.

  7“That radioactive groundwater”: Pat Mulroy quoted in David Thomson, In Nevada: The Land, the People, God, and Chance, 291. “In the new attention to the aquifer, it was found that in southern Nevada the water table had amounts of plutonium—leached in from the Test Site—that were moving far more quickly than had been thought possible before. Pat Mulroy said, ‘The plutonium doesn’t concern me because the flow pattern is not toward Las Vegas.’ It was going toward Death Valley.”

  7Lake Mead has dropped 130 feet: Lake Mead has an official capacity water level of 1,229 feet above sea level. The level fluctuates according to water volumes in the Colorado River, which in turn are determined by snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains. Water levels of Lake Mead are posted every day by the Bureau of Reclamation website. In the past decade the water level has dropped by at least 130 feet and in some months 140 feet. www.usbr.gov/lc/riverops.html.

  Although the levels vary, an agreed-upon average, the figure of a 130-foot decline, has been used since 2009. “Lake Mead’s Water Level Plunges as 11-Year Drought Lingers.” See also Henry Brean, “Las Vegas Water Chief Seeks Disaster Aid for Colorado River Drought.”

  7Area 51: The existence of Area 51 near Groom Lake, Nevada, was denied for years by the Pentagon and all military services. In 2008 the papers relating to the development of high-altitude spy planes such as the U-2, SR-71 (Blackbird), and Oxcart by the CIA at Area 51 north of Las Vegas were declassified. One of the many recent books on the subject is Annie Jacobsen, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base. In 2013–2014 the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas offered an ongoing Area 51 lecture series.

  CHAPTER 2. GOLDWATER AND THE DESERT INN

  9“the most elaborate gambling establishment in America”: Kefauver Committee Report, 10:907, quoted in Oscar Lewis, Sagebrush Casinos: The Story of Legal Gambling in Nevada, 201. Lewis, a sociologist, was writing in 1956 and said that the 1950 launch of the Desert Inn “is still looked on in Las Vegas as the most brilliant social event in the annals of the Strip.” He described the hotel as having four hundred rooms built around a big quadrangle that enclosed a swimming pool and spacious “terraces for lounging.” The resort encompassed 170 acres, an eighteen-hole golf course, a health club and solarium, twenty-four-hour meal service, two main dining rooms, a series of specialty shops, cocktail bars, a nightclub, and a casino that “in size and luxury has few rivals anywhere.” The cost was estimated at $5 million. Although Wilbur Clark’s name was in neon in front, as “Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn,” the real owners were Moe Dalitz and two associates from Detroit and Cleveland. The builder was Del Webb from Phoenix (also the builder of the Flamingo). In 1966 Howard Hughes returned to Las Vegas (supposedly to help with tests at Area 51) and took over the top floor of the Desert Inn; when Dalitz suggested it was time for him to move on, he bought the resort from Dalitz. In 2000 Steve Wynn bought the entire 170-acre property, imploded the hotel-casino, and built the two Wynn Resorts, today Las Vegas’s most luxurious resort hotel-casinos.

  9Designed by noted New York architect: The New York architect was Jac Lessman, whose architectural designs are archived at the Avery Architecture and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.

  9The real template for the Desert Inn: T. J. English, Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba . . . and Then Lost It to the Revolution, 289–290. “Havana will be a magical city,” Meyer Lansky told Armando Jaime, his driver. “Hotels like jewels. . . . Fabulous casinos, nightclubs, and bordellos as far as the eye can see. More people than you can imagine.”

  10“the muscle behind the Havana Mob”: Ibid., xvii.

  11Wilkerson looked at the land and wrote a check: A copy of Wilkerson’s check was included in a Las Vegas history exhibit at the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society at Twin Lakes Drive, June 2003. A copy is also archived in the Special Collections, Lied Library.

  12on hand for the hotel’s festive opening: Sally Denton and Roger Morris, The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America, 1947–2000, 151. The Goldwater family’s ties with Las Vegas came through Del Webb, a board member of the Valley National Bank of Phoenix along with Bob Goldwater, Barry’s brother. Walter Bimson’s Valley National Bank was a major bank for the land-development oligarchy of Phoenix and saw Las Vegas as a good investment opportunity. Valley National was the source of the loan to Bugsy Siegel used to pay Del Webb to finish the Flamingo. Webb often told the story of how nervous he was in asking Siegel for money. Siegel told him, “Don’t worry. We only kill each other.”

  13“Hoover formed a small group”: Steven Fox, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth Century America, 337.

  14He was murdered in his bed: Gus Greenbaum was known as the “second toughest Jewish mobster in Las Vegas,” the first being Moe Dalitz. His home was in Phoenix, where he ran the racing wire for Meyer Lansky and commuted to Las Vegas to run the Flamingo (and later the Riviera). In 1958 Greenbaum and his wife were found in bed in their Phoenix home with their throats cut ear to ear, inaugurating a series of gangland-style slayings in Phoenix. Michael F. Wendland, The Arizona Project, 21.

  14“I knew him only as a businessman”: Barry M. Goldwater with Jack Casserly, Goldwater, 133. Goldwater answered reporters’ questions about why he attended Greenbaum’s funeral. “The fact is,” Goldwater wrote in his memoir, “[I was] a major Phoenix store owner and political figure. . . . I knew many people. Greenbaum had operated a Phoenix grocery store before taking over a Las Vegas casino. He was, after all, a local resident.” Goldwater is the only source to have described Gus Greenbaum as “a former grocer.”

  14To have mobster friends: Goldwater always tried to discredit journalists such as Ed Reid who, in The Green Felt Jungle, described Goldwater’s frequent visits to Las Vegas, staying in plush suites at the Flamingo and enjoying the company of known racketeers, including Willie Bioff (later killed by a car bomb), Moe Sedway, and Gus Greenbaum.

  16“I’m secretary of the corporation”: US Congress, Hearings Before the Special Senate Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, 52, 61. When called to testify, Wilbur Clark explained that the Desert Inn was a corporation in which he held some stock, Moe Dalit
z and Morris Kleinman held 74 percent, and many others such as Hank Greenspun (a local newspaperman) had points. The restaurants, nightclubs, motel, and hotel were a separate operating company managed by vendors. When asked about his background, he said, “I worked on the old gambling boats, on the Joane A. Smith, the Monte Carlo, the Tango.” Meyer Lansky later gave Clark a job as director of entertainment at the Hotel Nacional in Havana.

  16“You have the most nebulous idea of your business”: Ibid., 53.

  16“that secret, indirect, revolving traffic”: Denton and Morris, Power and Money, 131.

  17“Well, I didn’t inherit a trust fund Senator”: Hearings Before the Special Senate Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, 923.

  18“the biggest mistake of my life”: Goldwater with Casserly, Goldwater, 55.

  19“He’d get wound up”: “AuH2O,” 43.

  20“Gus Greenbaum was running the horse-betting wire”: Ibid., 73. Others wrote about Rosenzweig’s links to “prostitution, gambling, and the police agencies that enforced the laws against them” as well as his ties with “mob-connected bookmakers and syndicate hoodlums who midwifed the birth of Las Vegas as the gambling capital of the nation.” Robert Gottlieb and Peter Wiley, Empires in the Sun: The Rise of the New American West, 171.

  21“That part of Northern Arizona”: John Dean and Barry Goldwater Jr., Pure Goldwater, May 26, 1952, 82.

  24“I don’t know what the hell I’d do”: Ibid., 79.

  25“My aim,” claimed Goldwater: Goldwater with Casserly, Goldwater, 3.

  26Las Vegas reporters noted: Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris, The Green Felt Jungle, 155. In April 1962, “Senators Barry Goldwater, Howard Cannon (Nevada), Frank Moss (Utah) along with fifty Air Force Reserve members from Goldwater’s unit arrived in JFK’s official plane for an ‘inspection tour’ of Nellis Air Force base in Las Vegas. They stayed one half hour, gave no notice to the press, then changed into civilian clothes and disappeared into the Strip casinos. Goldwater [was soon] elevated to Major General in the Air Force Reserve.”

  CHAPTER 3. THE LADIES FROM BLACK MESA

  28Mrs. Blackgoat explained: Author interview, February 16, 1991.

  29“replacing human beings with livestock”: Senator James Abourezk, Congressional Record, December 2, 1974, S20334, quoted in Jerry Kammer, The Second Long Walk: The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute, 127.

  32The Blair family had owned: Author conversation with James Blair, August 29, 1990.

  32“Anglo activists, most from outside Arizona”: Barry Goldwater with Jack Casserly, Goldwater, 85.

  36“Our great ancestors are buried here”: Author conversation with Roberta Blackgoat, February 17, 1991.

  37“He is a man”: Congressman Steiger introducing Goldwater during House hearings, May 14–15, 1973, US Congress, House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, Partition of Navajo and Hopi 1882 Reservation, 42.

  38A photograph taken during Goldwater’s visit: Kammer, Second Long Walk, 172 (photo inserts).

  39“There has been no decision”: Navajo Times, August 31, 1987, quoted in ibid., 164.

  39“No money has been appropriated for relocation”: Ibid.

  39“I can tell you right now”: Ibid., 165.

  40“the people here have suffered”: Ibid., 165.

  40“I’ve lived here fifty years”: Navajo Times, August 31, 1978.

  41“I had hoped”: Goldwater statement, hearings, Navajo-Hopi dispute, May 14–15, 1973, US Congress, House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, Partition of Navajo and Hopi 1882 Reservation, 42.

  42Black Mesa was home to the first: Lowell Hinkins, interview with the author, Black Mesa Slurry Pipeline office, March 15, 1990.

  42Bechtel designed and built the coal-slurry pipeline: According to Laton McCartney, Friends in High Places: Bechtel, America’s Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World, 15, Peter Flanigan, a business adviser to President Nixon, helped get a $3 billion grant for Bechtel to build the pipeline. After leaving the Nixon administration, Flanigan went to work as a managing partner at Dillon Read investment bank, in which Bechtel had a controlling interest. See also McCartney, Friends in High Places, 174n; and obituary, Boston Globe, August 2, 2013.

  CHAPTER 4. FOUNDING MYTHS: LAUGHLIN, NEVADA

  46No water is left in the Colorado River: Chasing Water, a film by Peter McBride (Bullfrog Films, 2011). See also The Colorado River by Peter McBride and Jonathan Waterman, 2011.

  48The huge development of Summerlin: Eugene P. Moehring and Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: A Centennial History, 234–235.

  50Lowell Hinkins, an operator at the slurry-pipeline office: Interview with the author, Black Mesa Slurry Pipeline office, March 15, 1990.

  52A series of films on YouTube: “Nevada Real Estate Crash #19,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=479bdfv1WHg.

  53The water-table level had dropped from 10 to 70 feet: Marjane Ambler, Breaking the Iron Bonds: Indian Control of Energy Development, 222.

  54“The water is more valuable than the coal”: US Department of the Interior, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Environmental Impacts and Proposed Permit Application for the Black Mesa–Kayenta Mine, Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations, Arizona, May 1990, letter from Marilyn Maseyevsa, 24; 1:1–14 refers to “minor water impacts.”

  55The 1985 accident: J. D. Dolan, “Anniversary of a Disaster,” Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2010.

  56Kit Owens, the public relations director: Interview with the author, March 14, 1990.

  58Thousands of archaeological ruins: The artifacts and ruins in the Black Mesa mining area were photographed and documented by the Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

  CHAPTER 5. GILDED AGE LAND GRABS

  61the fractious Republican convention of 1880: Thomas C. Reeves, Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur; Justus D. Doenecke, The Presidencies of James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur.

  62diplomatic recognition to the Congo Free State: Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.

  63“Proposed Reservation for the Moqui [Hopi] and Other Indians”: National Archives and Records Administration, map, Territory of Arizona, Department of the Interior, 1879, Marked File 911.

  64Half of the entire Navajo Tribe: National Archives and Records Administration, Bureau of Indian Affairs, New Mexico Superintendency, Record Group 75, File Mark S-581/1865, Navajo series IV, no. 1187. Indian superintendent Steck was completely opposed to the campaign by the War Department and General James Carleton’s plan to create a new reservation on the Pecos River for all the Navajo. Some eight thousand were moved to the reservation at Bosque Redondo by Kit Carson, and some seven thousand escaped and moved farther west. On January 11, 1865, Steck, Indian superintendent for New Mexico Territory, responded to an inquiry from Judge T. W. Woolson of New Mexico regarding the Navajo campaign: “The seven thousand left in their own country have large herds and are able to support themselves. . . . [T]he 8,000 at Bosque Redondo have no timber for shelter. . . . Justice demands they be located elsewhere. . . . [T]he location is almost destitute of wood, a scanty supply of water, no building timber and no shelter for stock against the storms of winter, and can only be kept up at an enormous expense to the government. . . . [T]here is not enough water to irrigate and the Pecos is frequently dry . . . and is impractical as a locality for a reservation for the Navajos. . . . It is my firm conviction that more can be accomplished upon a suitable reservation in their own country with an appropriation of $250,000 than at the Pecos with $2,000,000.”

  65The agent was powerless to do anything: National Archives and Records Administration, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Arizona Superintendency, Record Group 75, File Mark E-285/1880. On March 20, 1880, US Indian agent Galen Eastman wrote to the commissioner of Indian affairs about the urgency of setting a Hopi reservation boundary: “Believing that the M
ormons are about to settle on land that ought to be embraced in a Moquis Pueblo Indian Reservation, I cannot await the tardy appearance of the expected new agent for these Indians but feel impelled to press their necessity upon your attention and request that you do immediately call the Executive notice to their wants, to wit, that a tract of land be set off as a Reservation for the Moquis Pueblo Indians bounded as follows.” The reservation he proposed was a rectangle forty-eight miles east-west and twenty-four miles north-south.

  65A previous Indian agent: National Archives and Records Administration, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, Special Case No. 147, File Mark M-509/1880. On February 23, 1880, E. S. Merritt wrote to the commissioner of Indian affairs: “I have in my possession a long letter from the Hon. Comsr. Of Ind. Affairs regarding the segregation from the public domain of a Reservation for the Moquis Pueblo Indians, and also, as to whether they would consent to removal to the Little Colorado River. . . . Having lived in the immediate vicinity of Pueblo Indians and Mexicans for near twenty (20) years, I most emphatically state that they could not be induced to change their location and cannot be removed, except by force. . . . They, the Moquis, absolutely require Reservation and action should not be delayed. A piece of land 6 or 8 miles long and 3 or 4 miles wide in the form of a parallelogram, with the mesa and each village on or near the centre is all which is required.” See also Agent J. H. Fleming to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, December 4, 1882, File Mark 22383/1882: “The lands most desirable for the Moquis and which were cultivated by them 8 or 10 years ago, have been take up by the Mormons and others.”

  65the 1879 map Navajo Country: National Archives and Records Administration, report by Inspector Howard, Map No. 630.

  66“the coal deposit lies between Oraibi and Moenkopi”: Fleming to Inspector Howard, 1882, National Archives and Records Administration.

  66The Executive Order is dated December 16, 1882: National Archives and Records Administration, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, Executive Order File, File Mark 23017/1882. The order concludes: “The tract of country in the territory of Arizona [lying between described boundaries] . . . is hereby withdrawn from settlement and sale, and set apart for the use and occupancy of the Moqui and such other Indians as the Secretary of the Interior may see fit to settle thereon.” It is signed by Chester A. Arthur. Beneath the signature the Department of the Interior notes that the area described is 3,920 square miles and 2,508,800 acres.