Boulder City

A Federal Townsite on the Divide

At 300 Railroad Avenue stands the water filtration plant that the Bureau of Reclamation completed in February 1932 to bring treated Colorado River water to the new homes of Boulder City.³ The town lies approximately 26 miles southeast of Las Vegas and six miles from the dam site.^4,5 Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur visited the dam site and Las Vegas in 1929 and announced that the construction workforce of 5,000 would live in a new town his department would build.² The government said it hoped to house its workers in “a wholesome American community” of “flowers, schools and playgrounds” instead of Las Vegas, which Wilbur called “a boisterous frontier town.”² The place was first designated the Boulder Canyon Federal Reservation and later called Boulder City, while the dam it served, first called Boulder Dam, was renamed Hoover Dam in 1947.² Construction began in March 1931 by Six Companies, Inc., the firm that held the dam contract, though the 1940 Writers’ Program guide says the government built the town in 1932 as construction headquarters.^2,6 The town marker, erected in 2013, calls it the first planned community in southern Nevada, a federal reservation designed by Saco Rienk DeBoer.¹ The 1940 guide found wide streets that followed the curves of the hills, with houses of varying designs set on landscaped terraces.⁶

Cottages, Dormitories, and Rag Town

Married men and their families lived in 758 cottages, and single men paid $1.60 a day for room and board in one of nine dormitories.⁵ With no dairies in southern Nevada, the town’s food contractor bought a 160-acre farm at Mesquite, where 200 cows supplied milk, cream, and butter.⁵ Only workers tied to the building or operation of the dam could live in the town, and gaming and alcohol were both banned at first.¹ Bootleggers moved liquor from hidden stills through Bootleg Canyon, also called the Hooch Highway, and officers seized eight stills and arrested 72 people before Prohibition was repealed in early 1933.^5,7

Because Boulder City was not yet a town, there was no housing, and workers and their families lived in tents, in an area later referred to as Rag Town.⁸ In 1930 Michael McKeever, a government cook at Government Survey Camp #1, set up a small tent house in Hermenway Wash, and other workers built homes nearby in what became McKeeversville.⁹ By 1940 only five residents remained, but World War II brought new families looking for housing and the camp grew again.⁹ The federal government later turned over control of the land to the new city, and the bill allowing the transfer let McKeeversville residents buy their own lots; the area, since renamed Lakeview, keeps some remnants of the 1930’s camp.⁹

Rails, Bullock Field, and the Boulder Dam Hotel

The Boulder Branch railroad line was completed in 1931 to supply materials for the dam, and the post office opened the same year.^1,10 The Boulder Dam Hotel opened in 1933 on Cardenas Plaza, one of the town’s three original downtown squares, and fell on hard times after World War II, closing and reopening several times.¹¹ Noel E. Bullock, a race car driver and stunt pilot from North Platte, Nebraska, piloted the first flight into his new airfield on July 1, 1933.⁴ Bullock Field was unprofitable, his lease expired about 1934, and on December 22, 1934, Bullock died at the age of 45 when his plane crashed.⁴ In April 1938 TWA made its inaugural flight from a new division point at Boulder City, which the airline believed a more lucrative market than Las Vegas.^4,12 The Navy built a hangar at the existing Bullock Field airport, which one version of its nomination dates to 1940 and another to 1941.^4,13 The Civil Aeronautics Authority condemned the field in 1949, the year the airline moved to Las Vegas, and Bullock Field ceased operating as an airport in 1990.^4,12 The TWA terminal, built in 1938, has belonged since 1958 to Boulder City Lodge 1682 of the Elks.¹² The hangar, with its corrugated metal panels, steel-frame windows, and sliding doors, is a new nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.^13,14

From Federal Lease to Incorporated City

In 1940 the Writers’ Program guide counted an estimated 2,500 people at 2,500 feet, with no private ownership, leases of no more than ten years, and a city-manager in charge.⁶ The town marker dates incorporation to 1959, with a celebration on January 4, 1960, when federal land and buildings passed to the new city, while the McKeeversville marker gives 1960 and one online history puts the transfer in 1958.^1,9,15 The town marker calls Boulder City the only incorporated city in Nevada where gaming is not allowed.¹ The Boulder City Historic District, roughly bounded by Nevada Hwy., Avenue L, Date, and 5th streets, was nominated to the National Register in 1983, and its record lists late 19th and 20th century revival and bungalow/craftsman styles.^3,16 In a letter on the filtration plant’s rehabilitation, Gary Poindexter, Director of Public Works, asked to add lighting in the basement so visitors could see the piping from the main floor through the metal grates.¹⁷