Building the fence over Spooner Summit – Mesquite Local News

After the Verdi project was completed, Reliable FenceCompany went to work on the project to make U.S.Highway 50 over Spooner Summit a four lane highway. I did not work on the Spooner Summit project but the following story was told to me by Johnny Warren after theproject was completed.

On the Spooner Summit project, federal funds were involved and federal aid requirements had to be followed by the State Highway Department during construction. One of the requirements was that the general contractor and all the subcontractors had to submitcertifiedpayrolls every week to show that the contractors were paying the prevailing wage rates specified for each classification. This was a requirement of the Federal Davis-Bacon act.

When Reliable Fence Company started work on theright-of-way fence along the sides of the highway, they soon discovered that the slopes were very steep and the terrain was incredibly rough. Even military jeeps or other 4-wheel drive vehicles could not safely haul rolls of barbed wire, bags of concrete and fence posts to the job site.

Johnny Warren then decided to approach the State Highway Department to issue him a change order to use mules to haul the fence materials up the steep slopes. The bureaucrats in the construction office at the Highway Department at first told Johnny Warren that this could not be done, since there wasnot anequipment rental rate in the contract fora mule. Johnny Warren then replied with a proposal to have the mule ordonkeys put on his payroll so the animals could be paid at the prevailing wage rate forlaborers. This would cover the cost of buying themules and the hay they ate.

After considerablenegotiating, the State finally agreed to the proposal, but they cautioned him that as laborers, the mules ordonkeys must be shown by name and should have a social security number. They later dropped the social securitynumber requirement, but insisted thelaborers should be given a name.

When the change order was finally approved and Reliable Fence Company started work using a mule,the first certified payroll was submitted to theConstruction Office. Along with all the other equipment operators and laborers, there was one laborer listed with the name Jack Ass. Later, other mules and some donkeys were used on the project but Jerry Nelms could notremember their names. This information was confirmed recently by a telephone call to Jerry Nelms, Foremanfor Artistic Fence Co. He also told me that Harker and Harker Electrical Company had used a helicopters to put in the power lines on this same project due to the steep slopes.

This article is by Dayton Author and Historian, Dennis Cassinelli, who can be contacted on his blog atdenniscassinelli.com. All Dennis books sold through this publication will be at a discount plus $3.00 for eachshipmentfor postage and packaging.

Excerpt from:
Building the fence over Spooner Summit - Mesquite Local News