Gathered at the Hoover Dam site are, from left, Six Companies' Norman Gallison and H. J. Lawler; Bureau of Reclamation's Walker "Brig" Young; Six Companies' Charles Shea and Edmund O. Wattis; Bureau of Reclamation's Elwood Mead; project superintendent, Frank Crowe; Bureau of Reclamation's R. F. Walters; and Six Companies' W. A. Bechtel, whom Wattis would succeed as president. As the Depression paralyzed the economy, new construction projects dwindled to almost nothing. Marriner Eccles insisted that Utah Construction bid for a contract with the Bureau of Reclamation to build the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Executives of other major construction companies, including Kaiser, Bechtel, and Morrison Knudsen, also expressed an interest in the massive project and hoped to form a syndicate. By 1930, however, W. H. Wattis was in a San Francisco hospital suffering from terminal cancer. He felt that, if Utah Construction won the bid, the company ought to build the Hoover Dam on its own. Both E. 0. Wattis and superintendent Les Corey encouraged Marriner Eccles to persuade W. H. to join with the other interested parties. When W. H. agreed, he was elected president of Six Companies, with E. 0. one of 11 directors. Their meetings were held in the hospital suite, where W. H. enthusiastically displayed a model of the dam to visiting reporters. Word spread that Black Canyon, on the Nevada-Arizona border, had been chosen as the best site for a dam. Long before excavation began, unemployed men, and often their families, camped in Las Vegas and along the new government road that daily stretched farther into the desert.