24 UTAH INTERNATIONAL: A BIOGRAPHY OF A BUSINESS distance to Denver, Omaha, and points east by eliminating the necessity of going through San Francisco. (The senator was familiar with the mountains of Utah and Montana, having hauled goods by wagon from Salt Lake to Bannock, Montana, in his first entrepreneurial effort.) In league with Jay Gould, owner of the Denver & Rio Grande, Clark hoped to beat Harriman to the completion of another transcontinental line. To counter Clark’s scheme, the Harriman forces worked at breakneck speed, at times laying track parallel to the senator’s road, where there was room to do so. Trouble came when both teams chose the same route through some rugged terrain near Caliente. In a narrow gorge called Meadow Wash Canyon, Utah crews, working for Harriman, encountered Clark’s men, who had already completed more than 450 miles of railroad from Los Angeles. A tense standoff ensued, but fortunately good sense and humor dissolved the tension. As Les Corey remembered, The OSL was laying rails at the rate of a mile per day and reached a spot of disputed possession ahead of the Clark people, who had erected a barrier of wire fence threatening to shoot the first man who came across. The OSL chief engineer was with the crew at the time, so he had the cars backed up against the fence and personally pushed and dumped across the fence a small car of railroad cross ties. The riflemen were poised to shoot, but the chief, William Ashton, jumped to the ground across the fence to call the bluff. The riflemen shot all right, but they only had blank cartridges, so away went the race with a lot of laughing and kidding from both sides. Taking such adventures in stride, the Utah Construction Company began to prosper, with a building reputation, plenty of contracts, and respectable profits. The partners in the enterprise had just settled in for a long and healthy business relationship when suddenly the unexpected death of the firm’s president forced a reorganization at the top. On July 3, 1905, Thomas D. Dee slipped into water up to his waist while inspecting a site east of Huntsville for a possible reservoir for an irrigation and power company.