Longtime railroader, Las Vegas pioneer McColl dies at 90

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 1998 | 10:54 a.m.

When Jeff McColl took his first train trip to Las Vegas in 1921, it was little more than a watering stop for the Union Pacific Railroad.

During one of his last train trips to town in 1970, he was the Union Pacific's most senior engineer on what was that railroad company's last passenger run.

As a resident of Las Vegas for 75 years, McColl, a third-generation railroad engineer, saw practically the entire history of the town -- from its once-pristine desert and mountains that he loved to the advent of the mega-resorts that he marveled at but did not frequent.

Jeff D. McColl, the father of former Culinary Union boss Jeff McColl Jr., and 1953 Miss Nevada Jeannine Digilio, died Friday of heart failure at Desert Springs Hospital. He was 90.

Services will be 2 p.m. Wednesday at Palm Mortuary-Eastern. Interment will be in Palm Valley View Memorial Park.

"He said that when he first came to Las Vegas, he had a chance to buy land where the Sands used to be for $5 an acre," said Don Digilio, McColl's son-in-law, who was a longtime editor of the Review-Journal and later was a columnist for the Sun.

"Instead, he wound up homesteading 7 1/2 acres on the corner of (what is now) Sunset Road and Industrial Road. People used to stop and look at the home because he had a big garden where he grew grapes. He also raised geese, peacocks, sheep, rabbits, dogs and cats."

McColl Jr., of Las Vegas, recalled that his father did without a whole lot of life's basic necessities in the early years in that isolated house.

"He had no electricity in the home, and he had an outhouse," said McColl, who was president of Culinary Union Local 226 in the 1970s and secretary-treasurer in the '80s. "Dad got water each day in town by filling a 50-gallon tank in the back of his car, which he drove along a rutted power line road that was the only access to his home."

About five years ago, McColl Sr. was forced to sell his house and land to Clark County for the McCarran International Airport expansion project.

"It broke his heart to have to move from that house," McColl Jr. said. "After that, Dad bought a home in town, but he missed seeing the mountains, his large yard and the airplanes."

McColl and his late wife, Althea, had two children. Their daughter Jeannine not only competed in the Miss America pageant, but also was a stewardess, dancer and owner of a modeling agency before marrying Digilio. They now live in Henderson.

"He liked the Las Vegas of old," Digilio said, noting that McColl was impressed with the modern hotel-casinos, but not the growth that came with them. "He often said he considered moving away because the town got just too big."

Born Nov. 17, 1907, in Lampasas, Texas, McColl was the youngest of eight children. His mother died when he was young and his father, railroad engineer Donald McColl, was killed in a train accident near Austin, a few miles from where the family lived. McColl's grandfather also was a railroad engineer in Scotland.

When he was 14, McColl lied about his age to get a job with the Union Pacific Railroad, where two of his brothers worked as engineers.

McColl's first train trip to Las Vegas was aboard a locomotive engineered by his brother, Donald McColl Jr. They were carrying supplies to St. Thomas, a Mormon settlement that later was flooded when Hoover Dam was built, creating Lake Mead.

During his long career with the railroad, McColl carried passengers and cargo throughout the West. But, perhaps his proudest moment as an engineer, his family said, was the trip into Las Vegas that carried the last passengers before Amtrak took over that phase of railroad operations.

McColl moved to Las Vegas in 1923, and in the 1930s built his longtime residence. After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961, McColl built two bomb shelters on that property.

"That was his curse on the county (for forcing him to move)," Digilio said. "County workers had a real tough time getting those shelters out of there."

McColl retired from the railroad in 1970 and was active until about two years ago, when his health began to fail. He fell and broke his hip last year and never fully recovered, Digilio said.

McColl had suffered a heart attack in 1981 during his son's bid for Culinary secretary-treasurer, the union's No. 1 post. But just weeks later he attended Jeff Jr.'s installment ceremony.

"When I saw him, I said you shouldn't be here -- you recently had a heart attack," Jeff Jr. said. "But dad said he just couldn't miss that event."

McColl was regarded as practically unbeatable at checkers and an excellent pinochle player. A successful stock market investor, McColl was a longtime subscriber to the "Wall Street Journal" and read each issue from cover to cover until the day he died.

McColl was a member of the Zelzah Shriners, Daylite No. 30 Order of Eastern Star, Masonic Lodge Daylite No. 44 F&AM and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers.

In addition to his son and daughter, McColl is survived by a grandson, Jeff McColl III of Elko; two granddaughters, Dena Mann and Danelle Naegle, both of Las Vegas; and four great grandchildren.

DONATIONS: In McColl's memory to the Shriners Hospital for Children.