(soft music) - [Announcer 1] Support for Wild Nevada Memories is provided by the William N. Pennington foundation - [Announcer 2] Millie Hopper and Millard Reed - [Announcer 1] Gail and John Sande, - [Announcer 2] Margaret and Charles Burback, - [Announcer 1] And by individual members.

- [Man] It's been 20 years since Wild Nevada first appeared on public television.

Over the years, many people have asked what's it like to travel around and make the show.

So let's celebrate the 20th anniversary by reliving one of our favorite adventures and sharing some wild Nevada memories.

(soft music) - Hi, welcome to wild Nevada.

I'm Chris Orr - And I'm Dave Santina, and we're coming to you from Boulder city, which is a place that we visited before.

- The last time we were here, we went rafting down the Colorado river.

This time, we're going to see a few of the other things to do in the area, including, weather permitting, some skydiving.

- We'll be seeing about that one.

Now the last time- - When the idea of skydiving came up, I kinda thought it would be cool to do, and I was all for it.

Then when it got closer and closer to the time to go on the trip, I was becoming more reluctant.

So by the time we are doing other parts of the trip all I can think about is, "am I really going to jump out of a plane?"

- Where we turn right and drive just over a mile to the bootleg canyon parking area.

- This first segments hard to remember because I think so much focus was on the skydiving the next day.

- Bike stuff in Boulder city.

- Why am I wearing those bike shorts?

Wow.

Was that necessary?

- Them bikers have been coming to bootleg canyon for years but the 36 miles of interconnecting trails here were improved and extended in the past decade by trail master Brent Thompson.

- I had already had a pretty major bike crash.

So this trip I was focused on I'm going to do better this time.

- Where did it get that Bootleg Canyon name?

- Ah, there's several different versions.

One of the versions is Boulder city was a dry city because that's how they were building the dam.

They didn't want alcohol around the workers and that bootleggers were up in here.

And that's where they were making the whiskey and so forth.

You know, on the side.

- Somebody's dog just running around.

That's not a wild dog, I'm pretty sure.

- This particular episode featured another biking moment but this one went much smoother.

I think Chris has gotten much more comfortable - Bootleg Canyon, downhill trails are gnarly and extreme.

With names like Armageddon, Dominatrix, The Reaper and Elevator shaft.

These tracks would probably do us in.

Jeff takes pity on us and keeps us on the two cross country paths boy scout and girl scout.

Now these we can handle.

- Chris was so excited.

She made it to the top of that hill.

- And so the city of Boulder City is behind all making these trails and little camping areas we're working on right now, And it should turn out very nice.

That was cool, he powered right through.

- That was good.

We're (inaudible) what we just touched on two different ones.

- Yeah, we came down boy scout and then we picked up the end of Caldera and- - There's another dog.

Lot of dogs roaming around in this show.

- We're mostly what we're riding is from one place to another.

- So what do you have recommended trails for individuals of specific ability levels when they come in?

What do you tell people to do?

- Well, usually when they come in, they're looking for a map or something, we try to find out what their abilities are what trails they ride, what kind of bikes are right, that's important too.

And then we try to make a recommendation what's the best trail for them at that point.

- So yeah, this is one of those activities that most people see it in its most radical form on television where somebody jumping off a mountain top, but it's not all that and you can really enjoy it, even if you've never done it before.

There are trails for everybody.

- Exactly right.

Exactly right.

- Yeah.

And the bike really does make a big difference, Does it?

- It does.

I tell my wife you like the bike (both laughing) - It's a great bike.

That suspension makes it so easy to go over the rocks.

- It does.

It's it makes riding, it ups your ability in what you can ride.

And it's so much more comfortable.

And again, if it's more comfortable, you're having fun you can ride one.

- Yeah.

We get braver as we go, that's the dangerous part.

- Start feeling good.

- [Chris] You ready to go jump off any mountains yet?

- [Dave] After you.

I'll follow you.

- If I jump off a mountain, you know, it was by accident.

- Well, let's take on some more.

This one will be girl scout.

- Okay.

- You'll like this.

- [Dave] Are there cookies involved?

- No cookies.

- Dang.

- (laughing) That's a great line though, I have to admit.

- You should always bring your own cookies.

Just in case.

(upbeat music) - [Dave] This trail demands our concentration.

Seemingly endless turns, sharp drops and steep hills.

Luckily for us, the bikes that Jeff provided handle the terrain extremely well.

Good camera work is seamless, you don't think about it.

Now look at that, camera is riding a bike or running alongside and we're riding past.

- We're concentrating so hard on riding that we miss a lot of the beauty in the park.

This is only a small segment of the 4,000 acre park.

(guitar music continues) - We made it.

What'd you guys think?

- That's a great trail.

- Was that a blast?

- Yeah - What's the final toll, Chris?

- I think there was a little bit of scratches, maybe a little blood on that leg.

But other than that, I think I'm okay.

- You did great.

- I think I had a little incident with the pedal.

I think the pedal caught me which was why I had a little scrape on my leg.

- Yeah.

Thank you for showing us around.

- It was my pleasure, I'm glad you guys came out.

- [Dave] It was fun.

Yeah.

We're so lucky out here because we got to get moving on to our next adventure of the day.

- [Jeff] Okay.

- [Dave] It's a short drive to our next stop.

We just follow Highway 93 to Lakeshore Road, past the Allen Bible visitor center to the U.S. government construction railroad trail.

Here we meet Julian Rhinehart, an authority on the trail.

- I'm Julian Rhinehart.

- Nice to meet you, Julian.

- Hi Julian.

Nice to meet you.

Thanks for meeting us out here.

- Good.

- Really appreciate it.

- Welcome to Lake Mead national recreation area.

Thank you, thank you.

- We're going to have a good afternoon for a hike.

As you can see, we're standing right here in this area right in here, and here's a little blow up other down in here.

- Okay.

- But essentially this is a spur of the 30 mile trail segment in the Boulder City, Henderson area.

And this afternoon, we're going to be taking a hike that's just about three miles in length from the gate down the trail here, all the way down to the fifth tunnel on the historic railroad grade.

- It's great to get to revisit some of these locations and see the progress that is made that there's more of the trail now.

- That trail now goes all the way to the dam.

And we followed that trail on bicycles in a later year and a couple of years ago, this was 2003 so quite a few years ago, and now that trail is completely different.

- During the second world war when they had limited traffic going across the dam, 1941 through 1945.

And this is one of the several gates that they had down there to stop traffic.

They would put them across the convoys, roll up the car windows and go across in the military convoy.

- Now, if the trail itself is actually in some ways recycled, isn't it?

- That's right.

Oh, it was used initially, it was part of the United States construction railroad carrying the materials down to Hoover Dam for its construction, 1931 to 1935.

And the trail was taken out of use in 1961, dismantled in 1962.

They sold the rails from scrap and also some of the ties.

And from that time on, it's been a hiking trail in this area.

- Julian's got that Southern Nevada accent.

Right?

Maybe a little further south So, the name "The United States construction Railroad" seems a little unwieldy.

They have anything else?

- Oh yeah.

The workers and the locals had a much shorter name the "BC&B", and that stood for the Boulder city and back (all laughing) The trains will come down with the goods and generally they would come back empty.

Only two or three cars at a time.

But there was one exception because down here you'll see these large concrete masses.

These were plugs that were brought from the power plant at Hoover Dam, and as they installed a new generator, they only started out with about three generators initially and kept adding until they got the 17 generators in 1961.

- Some very cool trail features ahead of us here.

- Yes.

This is not your normal trail feature, is it?

- Oh, these are the, the tunnels.

We have five of them on this rigid trail.

And these tunnels are about 18 feet wide and 26 feet high.

- I think similar to trains, train tunnels are endlessly fascinating to me.

They bring back like the little kid in me.

You just have to go into them.

- I wonder if this is the only trail around where you actually get to walk through a railroad tunnel.

I'm just realizing while I look at it this is something that I've never done.

You don't get to do this, generally speaking (inaudible) Yeah.

And I'm like, you're walking on the tracks, so this is a pretty rare opportunity.

- Now, if you'll look up on the roof of the tunnel, you see kind of a city.

- [Dave] Yeah.

- That's the soot from the steam engines that came through here.

They had about four steam engines on this run at one time, ran 24 hours a day.

If you see anything up there that has a triangular shape to it, it's probably a bat.

- I always liked seeing the bats, I think they're cool.

I don't know if they like seeing us - And it's a little bit different than the others in that it has a bend in it.

You'll notice that you don't clearly see the end of the tunnel.

- It's the first one that you don't see straight through.

- That's right.

Now, one thing that's interesting here, this was, they had a fire in this tunnel in 1978 and they had to close it off.

This face was completely closed off and covered with shotcrete and it remained closed until 2001.

And the park service working with Bureau of Reclamation decided that they would open the tunnel back up.

And we hope to have the connecting link in there about two miles section completed by the federal highway administration or sometime very soon after that.

- And Julian was able to see it through because they finished it a few years ago and Julian unfortunately died in 2019.

I was sad to see that he's gone, but he was able to see that tunnel finished all the way to the dam.

So hopefully that gave him some pleasure.

- But it's on foot.

- I remember that night, both Dave and Chris were very nervous about skydiving and they put on a good face, but I think especially Chris was extremely nervous.

- That morning, we were having breakfast in the restaurant in Boulder city, and I was nervous but I was confident that it was gonna be okay.

So we're making some jokes and we're having sort of gallows humor about falling out of the sky, and Chris excuses herself to go to the bathroom.

Later, we find out that she was so nervous about it, that she just needed to get away from us and our stupid jokes.

We were not making her feel any better.

After the fact, when we finished all of this, Chris told us that she had written a will on her napkin in her hotel room the night before.

- The night before we did this, I was so scared at the idea that we were actually going to go jump out of planes.

I went ahead and wrote letters of goodbye to my mom and to a few of my loved ones, because I was that scared.

- I think Chris looks kind of like an astronaut.

- Thinking, going to the moon.

(light chuckle) - Look at that Sputnik hat.

why am I wearing that hat?

I don't understand whether that's supposed to be aerodynamic or what.

It just, or maybe it's just to make us look silly.

(drums) - How you doing, man?

- Doing great.

I don't want to look like that guy.

- Like that guy?

- I don't want you to look like that, either.

(upbeat drumming and electric guitar) - As the plane takes off and we settle into the short flight I'm still trying to decide if I have enough nerve to do this.

I think Simon knew I was freaked out.

I can kind of see it on his face.

He's looking at me like, oh, I got a scared one on me.

- I don't like falling, I don't like roller coasters and thrill rides, and the stomach in the throat feeling, and I thought this is gonna be one full minute of that.

And so I did research and looked it up and it said, no it doesn't feel like that at all.

It feels like floating.

So, that sounded cool.

This is the moment when I start to feel physically excited and nervous although skydiving.

- So, here's where I'm talking to my now wife at the time, girlfriend, Jessica, she did not like this.

She was not interested in me doing this but I was in the plane and I thought here's my chance to say "Hey, I love you, it's gonna be great, I'll see you when I get back."

I'll see you when I get back.

- Ready to have some fun?

- I'm ready to have some fun.

- Alright, let's have some fun out there, man.

- Alright.

The jump guys were great.

They were joking around, which made me feel better because if they can joke about it, then I know that this is something that's very easy for them.

(electric guitar and drums music) - Simon suggested that I open the jump door and, I think he thought it would get me excited about what was to come.

I find myself staring up at the ground.

In truth, all it did was made me really scared.

I want to say to Simon "come on and let's just get this over with", but before I can, he pitches us out of the plane and into our free fall.

So glad we jumped in tandem because I don't know that I would have been able to do it If I had jumped on my own (Chris laughing) - I was on the ground and I literally could hear when Chris jumped out of the plane.

Could literally hear her screaming all the way down to where we were, down on the ground.

- Well, at first, it's just all wind and I instinctively close my eyes with the wind impact, but quickly opened them again to see just an indescribable view.

(upbeat music) - A cacophony of noise for the entire free fall.

When he pulls the ripcord, dead silence.

It's jarring contrast.

- Yeah!

- Woo-ho-ho!

Oh!

After the first couple seconds, that's a lot of fun!

At this point now I knew that we were all good, the chute was open, we're just coming in, easy peasy.

And, it was time to have some fun.

He was having me steer and at the same time, it was fun doing that but it was like, I just want to enjoy the fall now.

(upbeat music) - That's amazing!

- What'd you think of that?

- That is awesome.

That is awesome That is awesome.

I could actually use the real meaning of the word.

I was sort of in awe of what I could see.

We overuse the word awesome and we cheapen it.

This was an awesome experience.

(euphoric music) (air ripping) - Wow.

- What'd you think of that?

- Nothing like it!

Nothing like it, man.

- At that moment, I'm really thinking I could totally do that again right now.

And it's been years and I haven't done it again.

- I would absolutely go skydiving again.

I haven't but, I absolutely would.

- That was great.

(laughing) Thank you so much.

This is, to put it simply, an unforgettable experience.

We can't thank Brad and Simon, everyone at skydive Las Vegas enough.

- Maybe the guy was just joking, but he said it, when we got down on the ground, I was a little worried because I didn't think the chute was gonna open this time.

Good thing Chris wrote a will down on a napkin.

- So those letters that I wrote to my mom and my other loved ones, as soon as we were done with the shoot and back in the hotel room, I did take them and just go ahead and threw them away.

- I was so scared, I'm sure you could tell.

I was so scared.

One of the tough parts of that whole thing was actually settling in for the rest of the day.

You know, I was still so adrenaline driven and giggling and overwhelmed that it was tough to get back focused - This is my heart, this is the Boulder Dam hotel.

(upbeat music) You know, when the government started building Hoover dam, they knew that it was gonna be a huge tourist attraction.

And there were actually people coming into Boulder City to watch the dam being built as soon as they started but there was no place nice for them to stay.

So the government put out a special contract to build the Boulder dam hotel, opened in 1933.

And from the dead opened all through the 1930s, it was filled with celebrities, millionaires, movie stars who came up from California.

This is probably the most historically associated building in the city.

(guitar music) This was the great thing about the Boulder dam hotel, at each room had a private bath, it was air cooled, air conditioned, and it had radiant heat radiators, old steam radiators in every room.

- [Chris] That was very luxurious for that time.

- [Dennis] For that time, for the thirties, Las Vegas had nothing like that, in fact.

This was the place to stay, the nicest place to stay between Salt Lake and Los Angeles.

- I met Dennis 1999, doing a documentary about Boulder City, and I spent a lot of time in Boulder city, and I got to interview Dennis and I always remembered him, and here he was running that museum in Boulder city when we got there for this.

And since this, which was 2003, Dennis went on to become the director of the Nevada State museum in Las Vegas.

He's retired now.

He's an interesting guy.

He's an author, many times over, an activist, really fascinating person.

- And it was actually one of the more important buildings in town because, it was the only source of entertainment for the workers.

They have 24 hour showings all year round because they had three shifts of men, of course working down at the down at the dam.

And the men who worked graveyard for instance, and had to try to sleep in the daytime when it was so hot, would come up to the Boulder Theater and sleep in there because it was the only air cooled building in the city.

So the owner, of the theater sort of reserved the back few rows for these men and it'd be full, snoring through the movie, sleeping.

- And there was no gambling, and still isn't here, which is a really distinguishing feature.

- No, no.

That's, yeah.

Boulder city, When the government owned it essentially, banned liquor and gaming and prostitution, which of course, you could have right outside the city limits.

- [Chris] Why did they do that?

What was their reason?

- They wanted social control of Boulder City.

They had to make sure that that dam was going to be finished with as few deaths as possible, and they didn't need a bunch of workers showing up with hangovers the next day, you know, trying to set dynamite and pour concrete.

- Right.

- So they kept that control and actually, liquor has only been legal in Boulder city since 1969.

And of course the gaming and prostitution still are banned.

- The villain, if you want to call them that, of the documentary was a guy named Sims Ely, who, really had a lot of control over the town.

And I remembered doing a shot of his face superimposed over Boulder city, like he was this magical being who had control over everything and, I got a kick out of that shot.

- Now, this looks like a very quaint little neighborhood.

- Yeah.

This neighborhood, this whole part of Boulder city, all the streets named after the alphabet.

Avenue B, C, D, F, G, H. That was the Six Companies part of town, Six Companies are the contractor who built the dam, and all of these little houses that you see along the street and all the other streets, were the workers' cottages for the married workers who showed up with families.

They started building them all in the spring of 1931, and they had crews, dozens of crews working two man crews and, they threw up one house and a half each day.

- Wait, two men would build a house?

By themselves in a day and a half?

- Yes.

And then the next day they'd come back and build the missing half of one house and a whole other house saying go on like that all the way down the street.

As they were.

- They're all identical?

- They were all identical.

In fact, there were wonderful stories from a lot of the workers before the streets were paved, before the sidewalks, before the trees and the grass, the houses all looked exactly the same, and workers who would come home off shift at night, would often get lost and walk into the front door of the wrong house.

- Get a little disoriented?

- Yeah, a little disoriented.

- Can you imagine?

You come home, you go into your house.

What you think is your house?

And it's not your house.

- When the government built Boulder city, they actually built it in two parts.

The subcontractors, the contractors built the six companies part, the little cottages down on the flats they call them, because we're now up on the brow of the hill.

Granite hill.

And, everything on the flats that the six companies built was meant to be torn down when the dam was finished and returned to desert.

And where we're walking now is the government part of town, the bureau of reclamation built these houses for their employees.

And it was meant that this would stay after the dam was finished.

And these neighborhoods would be permanent small, forced just to run free - I'm reliving a lot of this walking tour with Dennis because I forgotten a lot about what he told us when we were walking through Boulder city.

When I think about this trip, I remember the skydiving and have kind of forgotten that we did so many other things.

- All right, our final activity on this trip - We are going geocaching here in Boulder city.

We're using our GPS' to find a specific location.

So when we did this, geocaching was still relatively new and not something a lot of people were really doing yet.

- "Heat kills" The sign says, even though we're wearing jackets because it's not very warm that day, it was actually kind of cold.

This was in December.

- See right here.

It's got me at four feet here.

- This looks like a good place to hide something, but oh, Hey, Hey - Did you find it?

- I've got the log book signed.

And so now we just take something and leave something.

- Yeah.

What are you going to take?

- I'm going to actually take compensates and grab it next year.

- Makes sense.

I think two of us will count as one and I want to take anything out, but we have two things to put in.

- I have money from Brazil.

- Yeah, and I have money from Mali.

This is called a (inaudible).

So we'll leave that in there.

- Okay.

- Seal it up.

- Well, that's all we have time for in this Wild Nevada adventure, but we've had a lot of fun.

- Ah, We have seen everything around in and especially above Boulder city.

This one, we will never forget.

- When I finally confessed what we had done to my mom and called her and said, so we went skydiving.

I just remember her "No, you didn't.

Please tell me you didn't.

Why, why, why would you do..." - But I feel guilty now, in retrospect, making jokes at breakfast because I was kind of nervous too, but I didn't realize the level that she was suffering.

So I apologize 20 years later.

- [Announcer 1] Support for Wild Nevada Memories is provided by the William N. Pennington Foundation - [Announcer 2] Millie Hopper and Millard Reed, - [Announcer 1] Gail and John Sande - [Announcer 2] Margaret and Charles Burback - [Announcer 1] and by individual members.

(upbeat music)