31'ers Educational Outreach Heirloom Hollyhock Project

A Snapshot in the History of Boulder City
Brought to you by the City of Boulder City
and the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum
31’ers Educational Outreach
“Preserving Our Past to Educate the Future”
Heirloom Hollyhock Project
Stake your claim in greener Boulder City
C.A. Williams (Six Company’s construction foreman), H.S. McDowell (Six Company’s construction foreman),
R.C. Thaxton (U.S. Reclamation Service Engineer), Frank Crowe (Six Company’s construction superintendent)
and John C. Page (U.S. Reclamation Office)
Laying Out the Townsite, March 31, 1931 (Pacific Railroad Collection)
For more information about Hoover Dam & Boulder City visit the Boulder City
Hoover Dam Museum located at 1305 Arizona Street, Boulder City, Nevada
www.bcmha.org / 702.294.1988

Front row: L-R Erma Godbey, Tom Godbey, Grandma Elder & Grandma Pickett
Depicted above is a 1930s farm owned by Tom and Erma Godbey in Boulder City,
Nevada. Standing in the field with Tom and Erma are neighbors Grandma Elder and, at
the far right, Grandma Pickett.
Laura Godbey (pictured on the reverse side) describes the 1932 arrival of Grandma
Pickett and her family in Boulder City, “They looked like the Clampets in the television
show the Beverly Hillbillies without the rocking chair on top.” Laura Godbey later details
that, “Grandma Picket had a box full of jars with all kinds of succulents.”
During the first year of the development of Boulder City all focus was on the building
of Hoover Dam and the administration building to support the dam. In 1932 when the
Pickett family arrived in Boulder City, garden water was earmarked for administration
building use only. It would be a year before Grandma Pickett would be able to plant seeds
in her garden, and her succulents, with any chance of surviving.
Even with the water restrictions and lack of soil in the desert, Grandma Pickett kept her
succulents alive using the left-over dish, bath, and laundry water. To enrich her soil she
used manure from Tom Godbey’s mules, ashes from Erma Godbey’s wood-burning stove
and her own special compost.

31’ers Educational Outreach interview with
Laura (Godbey) Smith and Ila (Godbey) Clements-Davey
by 31’ers Educational Outreach Volunteer Joan Patterson
For a child living in Boulder City during the
1930s, when the surrounding desert seemed to
swallow the little government outpost whole,
anything green and lush must have seemed like a
small miracle.
For the young Godbey girls, Laura and Ila, one
of their miracles came in the form of a neighbor
they dubbed “Grandma Pickett.”
During construction of the dam, workers and
their families emigrated from all over the country.
The Godbeys had neighbors from Indiana,
California, Alabama and Texas. But Grandma
Pickett was different, and the girls essentially
“adopted” her as their own, especially Ila.
The beloved neighbor was from the Ozarks,
with a fondness for long skirts, sunbonnets and
smokeless tobacco. She brought different plants
with her from the mountain country in Arkansas
and somehow they survived; Ila remembers the
babied stalks sitting in metal coffee cans on a
handmade table behind the house.
Grandma Pickett taught both Ila and Laura
how to garden and the most important lesson was
“making the soil” She would nourish the dirt with
vegetable trimmings and egg shells, make it porous
with coffee grounds and kill the bugs with, well,
let’s just say that if anybody understood the power
of tobacco juice it was Grandma Pickett.
“She had a sprig of ivy she planted down in there
31’er Hollyhock seeds are now available at
the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum
Starting Summer 2012,
plants will be available at:
Ace Shopper Stopper, Albertson’s, Bloom,
Boulder Dam Hotel, Home Hardware
and Lady Bug Nursery
so it would come up over her kitchen window.
Believe me, it came up over the whole side of the
wall, in through the beam, over the kitchen ceiling
and into the dining room,” according to Ila.
It had to have cooled the house down in the
summer, but Laura remembers Grandma Pickett
talking about how all of the men in her household
smoked so it was a way to absorb the noxious fumes.
The kindly woman also grew hollyhocks. One
side of her yard was completely covered in beautiful
blooming stalks. But for Ila, so small as a child they
called her “Tiny,” there was one special plant she
would crawl under as a respite from the heat at
around the age of 3 or 4.
“As a little one I thought that was my best friend
in all the world,” she said, “because it was shade.”
Laura (Godbey) Smith and Ila (Godbey)
Clements-Davey have experienced life in other
areas of the country, but reside once again in
Boulder City, were their family first settled in 1931.
They continue to nurture their hollyhock plants and
make their seeds available to the 31’ers Educational
Outreach Team’s Hollyhock Project.

Front row: L-R Alice, Ila, Laura, Jim & Tom with their dog Boulder
Second row: L-R Erma & Tom Godbey
Godbey Family in front of Boulder City’s first privately built home
with early hollyhock plants, Easter 1936
The term “31’ers” was coined for the people who, in 1931, lived in tents in the desert while waiting for
the construction of Hoover Dam to begin and adequate housing to be built. When the men who built
the dam brought their families to what was to become Boulder City many of them had never lived in
the desert. They were not familiar with the plants and animals we see here because those species didn’t
live in the places the families had moved from. People brought seeds, plant clippings, and sometimes
even soil to establish their vegetable and flower gardens in the desert.
The families who still live on Ave. L have shared the seeds from those first plantings for generations.
To help raise funds for continued education outreach of local history, the 31’ers Educational Outreach
Team sells 31’ers Heirloom Hollyhock seeds gathered from neighborhoods of original 31er families.
These plants have roots all the way back to the 1930s.
Now, you too can have a piece of Hoover Dam and Boulder City history in your own garden. In honor
of the people who built Hoover Dam and Boulder City we ask that you plant 31’ers Heirloom Hollyhocks
and share the seeds and the 31’ers story with friends, family, and neighbors. The 31’ers thank
you for your efforts in keeping this tradition of sharing seeds and this story alive for future generations.
31’ers Educational Outreach Preserving the Past to Educate the Future