EG: His job was protected by his son, and his son was working for the Bureau of Reclamation. And if anybody wrote anything in to the Bureau of Reclamation about Simms Ely, his son got the letter and then Simms Ely knew you wrote and then you'd get kicked out of town by Simms Ely!

EG: Well, everything was very, very hard because it was so terribly hot and no matter what kind of a job you were on, you had to contend with the heat. Now Turner Construction, they finally decided that they would have two groups of men working on the road to the dam and one group would go to work at 4 in the morning and work till noon. Nobody would work from noon until 4 o'clock. Then another group would go and work from 4 o'clock until midnight and they would use -- they had big, oh, ah, you know, lights that they worked by when it got dark. But -- but nobody could work -- the men were passin' out with the heat. But then they found out that, you see, you were sweatin' out all your salt. Then they started givin' everybody salt tablets. Any time you could get hurt and any time you could pass out with the heat. Now he used to go to work on that job at 4 in the morning and come home at noon.

EG: I was worried about him when he was at work and I was worried about the heat, 'cause, you see, he couldn't get sleep, except we'd wrap in the wet, wet things. And I'd take a dishpan when he got home to be with the children, I would take it and I would walk down to the store that Merl Emery had, and I would get 15 cents worth of ice and I would walk back. And that was a quarter of a mile from the store to our tent. And then we would have a drink of cold water and maybe lemonade, one cold drink of water in 24 hours.

EG: My husband made $4 a day.

EG: Well, gosh, yes, we were happy to get anything! When you'd been out of work as long as we'd been out of work, why, you were glad to get anything.

EG: Oh, not until later, when we lived in the railroad Y. When we came back from Las Vegas, we lived in the railroad Y and there was a young boy who lived closed to us. And one day he came over and he said, "Mrs. Godbey, would you like to go and see where the dam is going to be?" And I said, "Sure." And he said, "Well, I'll carry the baby." And so we went down and we walked all through just on the rocks, you know, through where they have all of the wiring now, you know, where they bring the electricity and then send it out everywhere. But that was all just -- just bare rocks there. And we went over and they had white spots painted on each side of the canyon wall, round white spots, where the dam was going to abutt to the canyon wall. And we looked over and saw that and I scraped on a rock, with another rock, my Ila, that she was a baby just -- well, she was about 7 months old by then, see.

EG: Six Companies really wanted to have [Boulder City] built so they'd have a place for their people, the government and Six Companies both, for their people that were working for them, but, you see, due to the Depression, people came before they were ready. But they had really planned on having the town pretty well built so they'd have places for the people to stay.

EG: They started working because everybody was out of work and they wanted to work and they were already here before they were able to get the housing built. But they had planned on building the housing so's that they wouldn't be in a mess like that, but it was' cause there was no other work in the whole United States.

EG: I just wish my husband could be alive now and see all the new housing that has gone on in Boulder City and all the beautiful homes that are here, because after the dam was finished, they thought the town would go to pot. But by that time the Bureau of Mines had come in and started and there was enough -- so some of the people stayed and then there were jobs in Las Vegas that some of the people that stayed in Boulder worked in Las Vegas.

EG: I feel pride and I feel, "God, this is a marvelous job they did." And I think of all the men that worked on it and all of the figuring and everything that they did to do it, because, you see, now after they got the water diverted into the diversion tunnels and around the base of the dam, then they still had to dig down till they got to bedrock, which was about 100 or more feet deeper, until they could get good solid footing to put the dam. And then, you see, whenever there was any place that it was leakin' around through the mountains, why they grouted that.

EG: Well, I certainly do feel pride when I look at Boulder Dam and know all of the men that had worked on it.

EG: Oh, the 31ers, we're dyin' out. [The 31ers were the first to arrive at the site, in 1931.] There's very few of us left. There might be several men left, but very, very few of the women are left, because men came ahead of their wives and didn't bring their wives until after they got a job. You know, they left their wives and children back home, a lot of 'em.

EG: We call it the 31ers Club and we get together every year and have a dinner. Oh, it was very -- it was wonderful.

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