Page 73 - 2005 DT 12 Issues

I n T h i s I s s u e !

Featured Article

How do you explain Henderson?..........1

Departments
News & Notes.......................................2

Programs & Hikes.................................4
October 2005 Desk Schedule.....................................6
Bulletin Board.......................................8

How do you explain Henderson? stepped on many toes, the most
But Eells’ roughshod manners
Part 2 on how Henderson, NV came to be. sensitive of which belonged to the
powerbrokers of little neighbor Las
by Jack Ryan Future? Possibly the seeds of Hender- Vegas. Las Vegas was delighted to
son’s erratic life can be traced to the have BMI’s industrial might in its back
he birth and explosive growth parenting of Howard P. Eells.
of Henderson, Nev., are easily Henderson’s true father was Eells, yard, but it also wanted those 13,000
Texplained. In 1939 the United a can-do industrialist from Cleveland. new Nevadans to live in Las Vegas,
States belatedly realized that it would In 1940 he assured the panicky U.S. where they could shop, build homes,
be drawn into World War II for which government that his company, Basic pay taxes. No, said BMI. They live in
it was totally unprepared. As part of Magnesium Inc., would build the Basic Township, where they can walk
the U.S. frenetic mobilization, Hender- world’s biggest magnesium plant. to work. And, thus, began a down-
son magically appeared in the desert What’s more, he’d throw in work- and-dirty feud that would stunt Basic/
wasteland. Overnight, it provided ers’ living quarters, informally called Henderson’s growth for decades.
housing for 13,000 workers and their Clark County, aka Las Vegas,
Basic Township, be- mustered its considerable Washington
cause nobody had time clout. Eells and company countered
to christen it by any with their formidable lobby. At the
dressier name. And end of bitter negotiations, Las Vegas
he’d do all this in less appeared to have lost the battle but
than three years. And won the war. BMI could keep its
he did, with ruthless workers snuggled next to the magne-
get-it-done-damn-the- sium plant. But they’d be housed in
cost tactics. prefabricated units assembled in Los
Example: When Angeles and shipped back immedi-
wartime copper was too ately after the war. BMI also threw in
scarce for the electric
The site of Anderson Camp and Tent City which housed war-scarce lumber for much needed
single male workers from the BMI facility, circa 1942. lines of the huge plant, housing in Las Vegas (Eells had a
Courtesy, City of Henderson Eells grabbed a ready knack for finding scarce material in a

substitute—silver. With rationing era).
families, producing tens of tons of
magnesium ingots for war planes and the help of Pat McCarran, Nevada’s Eells plunged ahead with his giant
incendiary weapons. legendary strong-armed senator, BMI project making more local enemies
What’s inexplicable is the city’s got a 141-ton “loan” of silver from the with his swashbuckling tactics. He
postwar history. Why, when every- U.S. Treasury and McCarran got his apparently personally offended in-
body in the post-war years thought of picture published nationally standing terim Senator Berkeley Bunker who,
it as the City of the Living Dead, has in front of a pile of silver ingots larger
it become the City of the Boundless than a deluxe Packard sedan.
Henderson?, continued on page 6