Relief came, not from Six Companies or the government, but from Murl Emery, a Colorado River ferryman. Murl and his family opened a store for the residents of Ragtown, trucking in food and supplies from Las Vegas. Instead of charging high prices for the much-needed goods, Murl Emery allowed people to pay the prices they were used to. If a woman had paid 60 cents for a can of peaches in Kansas, that was what she would pay. If another paid 20 cents for the same can in Colorado, she would pay Emery 20 cents.

"They’d come with their kids. They came with everything on their backs. And their cars had broke down before they got here, and they walked. No one helped them. I was the only person they could come to. The only person they had access too. The government would have nothing to do with them. . . So we began to feed these people. Some of them had no money. Truckloads of provisions every day and coming out feeding these people. I kept a lousy set of books. Everything was on honor. It worked." Murl Emery