Name/Title
Charles Arthur Hughes HomeEntry/Object ID
1989.323.0150Description
Charles Arthur Hughes Home #17 on the walking tour
50 Hughes Ave.
The original home of Charles Arthur and Orilla Hughes was built around 1901. Following their marriage in 1900, they lived in a lumber granary and the old rock house. Then when they wanted their own home, they traded for the present lot and built a sixteen by sixteen foot square room. They had a cook stove under a brush shed where they cooked in the summer. The girls slept in the house on a trundle bed. When the family got too large for the house, the boys slept in a boarded up tent in the back yard. All of their 13 children lived in that home.
The present home on the site was built in front of where the old house stood. They used cement block for the new house laid up first and then two thickness of adobe all around,” according to Hughes. The adobe was made from clay they hauled from the area by the cemetery.
The rooms were covered with a mixture of clay and fine gravel plastered right into the adobe. When they put the roof on, they tore down the old one-room house and used the wood for the ceiling. Hughes went into debt for the first time in his life when he bought doors and windows in Las Vegas for the house.
The Hughes family had range cattle until they started a dairy behind the home around 1943-45. The dairy with up to 1,100 head of stock encompassed the area of the Morning Star Subdivision and operated until 1992.
There was no foundation but two by eight stringers were braced on rock and then a lumber floor was laid down. The walls and roof were made of 12-inch lumber, and six-inch boards were nailed over cracks. The ceiling was factory cloth (unbleached muslin). The fireplace on the south and the chimney were of adobe. They had two doors and one small window.