Surviving Ragtown
Fresh water was another problem: men dug holes in the river bank, which filled with water, and when the mud had separated out their wives could dip buckets in to retrieve water for drinking and cooking. But it wasn't clean, and dysentery frequently swept the settlement. Sanitary arrangements were rudimentary, and ditch latrines were the norm, sprinkled with slaked lime to control stench and disease.
And yet Ragtown was a community. There was Murl Emery's store, a baker, and a barber named Curley - later arrested for bootlegging. The sandy ruts that were the streets of Ragtown had grand names such as Broadway and Riverside Drive. There were church services and a small school. Children played hide-and-seek along the riverbank, and took iguanas, horned toads, and kangaroo rats for pets.
'Children played hide-and-seek along the riverbank, and took iguanas, horned toads, and kangaroo rats for pets.'
Citizens formed a Welfare Club and Ladies' Aid Society to help newcomers or residents burned out by brushfires. There was a post office and an information bureau operated by Deputy Marshal Williams, who lived with his family in a tent on a hillside overlooking the settlement.
The deputy marshal's wife, Dorothy, wrote a social column about Ragtown for a Las Vegas newspaper. She titled it 'Williamsville Town Topics', and here she detailed the comings and goings of Ragtown residents as though it were a community like any other. Reporters from newspapers throughout the country, sent into Nevada to cover the Hoover Dam project, wrote stories about Ragtown, too. In describing to a Los Angeles Times reporter why she had come to Ragtown, Edith Powell, the first woman to arrive there, said:
'Where my husband goes, that's where I go. He wants me with him and I want to be with him. We've been in lots worse places than this. There's going to be a grand city here someday.'
Published: 2003-09-23