Utah's crowning achievement was the Hoover Dam which, in the words of historian David McCullough, "changed immeasurably" both the lives of those who built it, and the American West itself. As McCullough notes, the Hoover Dam did "truly make the desert bloom, and more." The story of the Utah Construction Company reflects the entrepreneurial spirit and financial backing of founders David Eccles and Thomas D. Dee, the gregarious deal-making of W. H. Wattis, and the determined project management of E. 0. Wattis. By the completion of the hallmark enterprise with Six Companies, the building of the Hoover Dam, each company founder had died. Their legacy in heavy construction continued. The railroad tracks laid between 1900-1910 were duplicated between 1950-1970 in nations as unknown to the company founders as Korea and Congo. The construction projects that diversified so profoundly during the middle part of the century built a second legacy. Water rushed into drinking fountains in Manhattan's skyscrapers through channels laid by Utah Construction. Tourists traveled the Alaska-Canadian Highway, built to protect the Territory of Alaska from Japanese forces. Every day people used company-built banks, high rises, hospitals, parking garages, and military housing. Scientists and engineers reported to work at missile complexes, parents swung their children on playgrounds developed from swamps, and millions depended on dams as famous as the Hoover and as homey as the East Canyon Dam, which still tames the Weber River above the founders' hometown of Ogden, Utah. Combined, the lives of Marriner Eccles (1890-1977) and Ed Littlefield (1914-2001) overlapped the century's beginning and end. The convergence midway, in 1951, of their uncommon vision, adventuresome hearts, and insistent ethics transformed the "Little Company That Could" into a publicly held, incredibly profitable mining multinational. Its 1976 merger with General Electric not only benefitted shareholders but, through philanthropy, continues to fund numerous entities that extend education, medical research and treatment, and the arts to communities throughout the State of Utah and beyond.