Jul. 02, 2024
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This article is about the consortium that built the Hoover Dam . For the Chinese association, see Chinese Six Companies
Six Companies, Inc. was a joint venture of construction companies that was formed to build the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in Nevada and Arizona.[1]
They later built Parker Dam, a portion of the Grand Coulee Dam, the Colorado River Aqueduct across the Mojave and Colorado Deserts to urban Southern California, and many other large projects.
Hoover Dam
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On January 10, , the Bureau of Reclamation made bid documents for the Hoover Dam construction project available to interested parties at $5 a copy (equivalent to $100.00 in [2]). The government would provide the materials, and the contractor was to prepare the site and build the dam. The dam was described in minute detail, covering 100 pages of text and 76 drawings. A $2 million (equivalent to $32.3 million in [3]) bid bond was to accompany each bid. The winner would have to post a $5 million (equivalent to $80.7 million in [3]) performance bond. The contractor would have seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue.[4]
Because of the project's immense size and the fact that it was the first dam on the Colorado River, no single contractor had the resources to make a qualified bid alone. So, general contractors Utah Construction Company of Ogden, Utah decided to form a consortium in order to submit a joint bid for the contract. Initially, Utah Construction Company's owners, brothers E.O. and W.H. Wattis, along with the company's vice president, Andrew H. Christensen, asked Harry W. Morrison of Morrison-Knudsen to join them. After they realized the bid would be much higher than expected, the Wattis Brothers and Morrison-Knudsen convinced four additional companies to join. In February The Six Companies, Inc. was incorporated as a joint venture and they began working out a bid enlisting the help of Morrison-Knudsen employee Frank T. Crowe to do so.
The project was so complex and large that only three bids were received and, on March 4, , the US Secretary of the Interior accepted the Six Companies' bid of US$48,890,955 (equivalent to $789 million in [3]). This was $5,000,000 lower than the next bidder, meaning a bid-spread of almost 10%.[5]
The Six Companies board selected Crowe, who had helped draft the bid, as the General Construction Superintendent of the Boulder Dam construction. He was heavily involved and hired each of the men who were employed during the course of the project, lived in Boulder City with his wife and two daughters, and was on the dam site every day of the week until the project was completed.
Work began around June [6] and The Six Companies completed the dam's construction two years ahead of schedule in . Crowe was awarded a bonus percentage of the profit for completing virtually every portion of the job well ahead of schedule. The dam was dedicated in September but it took an additional nine years (&#;) under relative secrecy, to fix serious leaks with a supplemental grout curtain.[7]
Six Companies Railroad
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The Six Companies also built the 19.1-mile (30.7 km) Six Companies Railroad. It ran along the Hemenway Wash, present day Las Vegas Bay, and connected to the US Government Hoover Dam Railroad at Lawler, Nevada, a location also known as "US Government Junction". From Lawler the railroad went north for seven miles (11 km) to Saddle Island and then east to the Three-Way Junction gravel plant, now submerged under Lake Mead. From the gravel plant the line split into two branches. One branch ran south for 4.8 miles (7.7 km) to the dam via Cape Horn, Lomix (the Low Level Concrete Mixing Plant) and Himix (the High Level Concrete Mixing Plant) and the dam face. The other branch, now also submerged under Lake Mead, ran north for 7.3 miles (11.7 km) across the Las Vegas Wash, crossed the Colorado River on a bridge into Arizona and the Arizona gravel pit (Arizona Gravel Deposits) at a location two miles (3.2 km) from Callville.
The line was constructed by railroad contractor John Phillips of San Francisco, California. Since the completion of the dam and filling of Lake Mead, Six Companies, Inc. railroad line is now submerged.
The Western Pacific Railroad purchased several of the Six Companies dump cars for company service after the dam was completed and the equipment declared surplus. One of these cars is now preserved at the Western Pacific Railroad Museum at Portola, California.
The US Government Railroad had a 10-mile (16 km) branch that brought supplies by rail from a connection with the Boulder City Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad at Boulder City, Nevada.
WWII
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During World War II, the Six Companies built airstrips and related facilities on Pacific islands. The venture also held a majority ownership interest in Joshua Hendy Iron Works in Sunnyvale, California. Hendy was most known for its record-breaking assembly line production of 754 Liberty Ship EC-2 Reciprocating Steam Engines, producing one engine every 40.8 hours. They were used at the Richmond Shipyards.[8][9][10]
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Related links:Company structure
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Six Companies Inc. was composed of:
Leadership was split between the companies with officers:
Board members included:
See also
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References
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Further reading
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As proposed, the building of the Boulder Dam would constitute the largest public works project in the history of the United States to date. Construction and engineering interests were eager to leave their stamp upon the finished product. They were weary, though, of the five-million dollar performance bond the government was demanding from whomever was awarded the contract. That staggering amount seemed to pose a financial risk beyond the means of any one construction company.
The coming together of what became Six Companies is a story of the melding of ambitions of maverick individuals, each driven by a desire to transform the emerging West. Each of them knew that success on this project would allow them to step out from the shadow of Eastern financiers and industrialists.
The idea to form one company out of a union of various construction and engineering firms came from Harry Morrison of the Morrison-Knudsen construction firm of Boise, Idaho. Morrison had forged a profitable working relationship with Utah Construction and decided they, too, should be in on the Black Canyon &#; as it was called at the time &#; project. Added to the mix was Charlie Shea, a seat-of-the-pants builder of tunnels and sewers who liked to brag, &#;I wouldn&#;t go near a bank unless I owed them at least half a million dollars&#;that way you get respect.&#; Half a million was just the amount Shea pledged toward the performance bond. Along with his colorful and boisterous personality, Shea possessed the necessary skills and connections to further the project. He enlisted the interest of the Pacific Bridge Company and Felix Kahn of the San Francisco firm, MacDonald and Kahn. Meanwhile, Harry Kaiser, an ambitious young road builder from Oakland, California, and his mentor Warren A. Bechtel, a powerful old-line San Francisco contractor had become interested in the project. Kaiser&#;s experience in the working world extended back to when he dropped out of school at age 11. The elder Bechtel had developed an admiration for Kaiser&#;s work ethic and drive. It was Bechtel who suggested that he and Kaiser join forces with the alliance being formed by Harry Morrison. Felix Kahn coined the name Six Companies.
Once the players were in place and the requisite performance bond funds were available, all attention turned to the submission of a winning bid. The scoop from inside Washington was that the Reclamation Service was not going to waste time with bids designed to pad the pockets of any private firms. Their engineers had estimated the cost of the project down to the last dime. The men of Six Companies, at the urging of Harry Morrison, turned to Frank Crowe to come up with a number that would get them the job.
Considered the finest construction man in the country, Crowe adhered to meticulous standards in his work and personal life. With a calculating eye and a keen mind, Crowe presented a bid of $48,890,995. The number fell just $24,000 short of the Reclamation Service&#;s own accounting, low enough to win the contract for Six Companies.
With the success of the Hoover Dam&#;the project was completed two years ahead of schedule&#;the men of Six Companies were emboldened to take on new challenges. Stephen Bechtel, son of Warren and the project&#;s chief executive following his death, proclaimed, &#;We&#;ll build anything for anybody, no matter what the location, type, or size.&#;
After Hoover Dam, Six Companies stood as a monolithic entity in the new American West. The ensuing decades witnessed their construction of the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams, the foundations for the Golden Gate and Bay bridges, numerous canals, tunnels, factories, shipyards, pipelines and refineries in the U.S. and abroad. Six Companies&#; construction of Hoover Dam was also significant in that it forged a bond between government funding and private-sector expertise, motivated by the cache of projects of such scale.
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