SZ UTAH INTERNATIONAL: A BIOGRAPHY OF A BUSINESS In the meantime, a variety of small railroad and tunnel projects in western states bolstered the company’s backlog. In 1908, for instance, the company completed the Natron-Oakridge line in Oregon for Southern Pacific under a $2.5 million contract. Then, with the end of the Western Pacific project in 1911, Utah undertook several more small-scale projects, including the Nampa (Idaho) Branch mainline for the OSL; the Sherwood-Arcata mainline in California for Northwestern Pacific; and a mainline from Helper to Soldier Summit, Utah, for the Denver & Rio Grande. Utah drilled more than thirty tunnels for these projects, amounting to some 20,000 linear feet. These three projects brought in nearly $10 million in contracts. Although railroad building continued to occupy most of its efforts, after 1915 the firm regularly undertook water projects. One of the first was the East Canyon Dam near Morgan, for the Utah Irrigation District, a concrete structure completed in 1916 at an approximate cost of $700,000. When the United States entered the Great War in Europe in 1917, railroad construction in the West slowed considerably. Utah nevertheless managed to remain busy through the duration of the war with a $2.5 million contract for building the mainline from Coyote Wells to Jacumba, California, for the San Diego and Eastern Arizona Railroad Company. By the time of the armistice in 1919, Utah had completed this project. Anticipating a postwar construction boom, it employed its first engineer in 1920. Prior to that time, Utah officials had bid on projects by comparing the new job with a previous one. The firm’s engineer, on the other hand, computed the quantities and types of material moved and determined costs with hard numbers. Also in 1920, the Utah Railway Company, a subsidiary of the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company, employed Utah Construction to lay a main track with a $6 million contract. The next three years brought a series of small contracts—the Haig Branch extension in Nebraska for Union Pacific; a line extension between Santa Ana and Los Angeles and lines to Fillmore and Cedar City, Utah, for the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad Company; and tunnel work for the Southern Pacific south of San Francisco. Although these jobs were relatively minor, they nevertheless brought more than a million dollars in contracts to the firm.