UNLV Libraries: The Diaries of John Chatfield Page and Frank C. "Doc" Jensen

SERVICES FOR
Undergraduate Students
Graduate Students
Faculty & Instructors
Distance Education
Persons w/ Disabilities
Off-Campus Access

About the Libraries
Library Employment
Services and Policies
Collections
Help and Instruction
Ask a Librarian

im icons

UNLV Libraries Main Page -> Web & Digitization Services -> The Diaries of John Chatfield Page and Frank C. "Doc" Jensen

The Diaries of John Chatfield Page and Frank C. 'Doc' Jensen

Frank (Doc) Jensen was born May 18, 1904 in Brooklyn, New York and attended two years of medical school at the College of Medical Evangelists in Loma Linda, California before the depression forced him to leave school. In August 1932, he arrived in Boulder City and found work as an orderly at the Six Companies Hospital. He worked there until May 1933 when he began work as a first aid attendant at the Boulder (later Hoover) Dam construction site. After construction was completed, Jensen continued to work as a first aid attendant at the Dam until his retirement in 1969. He died in Tuscon, Arizona in 1978. An avid diarist, Jensen kept a daily journal for most of his adult life. The volume reproduced here (December 1931 - December 1937) covers the years he spent as the first aid attendant at the Boulder Dam site.

Born October 12, 1887 in Syracuse, Nebraska, John Chatfield Page graduated in 1908 with a degree in civil engineering from the University of Nebraska. After working as a topographer and city engineer, Page went to work for the United States Bureau of Reclamation in 1911. It was in this capacity that he would eventually be appointed to the position of office engineer of the Boulder (later Hoover) Dam project, where he served throughout the Dam's construction from 1930-35. Page would later serve as Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation; he died in Denver, Colorado in 1955. The town of Page, Arizona, located just next to the Glen Canyon Dam, was named in his honor. Page's diaries for this time period record items such as the temperature and daily office activities. They also include valuable descriptions of major events that occurred during the Dam's construction as well as numerous entries on the early development of Boulder City. With the exception of the missing 1933 volume, the diaries are complete for the time period from 1930-1935.

Please note that the original diaries now reside at the Boulder City Museum and Historical Association, located in the Boulder Dam Hotel at 1305 Arizona Street Boulder City, Nevada. Contact curator Dennis McBride at (702) 294-1988 for information on access to the diaries or if you would like additional biographical information on John C. Page and Frank "Doc" Jensen.