| Image Captions |
When bids were read on March 4, 1931, at the Bureau of Reclamation office in Denver, Six Companies came in lowest by $5 million with a bid of $48,890,955. Shown at the dam site are (left) Six Companies' Norman Gallison, Henry J. Lawler, and (center) Edmund O. Wattis; (third from left) Walker Young; Charles Shea; Bureau commissioner Elwood Mead; superintendent Frank Crowe; Bureau engineer Raymond Walter; and Warren A. Bechtel, first vice president of Six Companies. Outside a diversion tunnel, Edmund O. Wattis (left) confers with frequent partner Henry Morrison. After William H. Wattis died of cancer, in September 1931, he was succeeded as Six Companies president by Warren Bechtel. Upon Bechtel's death in 1933, Edmund O. Wattis became president, succeeded by Henry Morrison the following year. |
| OCR Text |
Show "As Six Companies awaited its midsummer start on heavy construction, late spring and early summer of 1931 hustled with preparations. Temporary quarters went up to house the three hundred men who erected camps, removed loose rock from Black Canyon's walls, and prepared areas for heavy equipment. A Stockton, California, builder raced to finish a highway into Boulder City from the dam site even as government contractors laid ten miles of track from the Union Pacific terminus at Boulder to the canyon rim... This double-track construction line, much of it through tunnels, ran along the canyon wall at the 720-foot level of the cofferdams... and linked the entire operation. Utah Construction also built an aggregate producing and batch plant to supply 4.5 million yards of concrete and grout... "6 - Gene A. Sessions and Sterling D. Sessions "My grandfather [Edmund O. Wattis]... was president of a consortium of Six Companies that built the Hoover Dam... Even at the time of his death, my grandfather still had wavy, curly hair and a ruddy complexion. My grandfather was very tall for his generation, standing six feet. He was fairly spare-limbed... not thin, but not husky either. He suffered from asthma. When he was not at work he dressed in a suit with a vest. Across the vest was a gold chain with a cigar clipper on one side, and a handsome gold watch... on the other side. A Masonic pin dangled from the middle of the watch chain. "7 - Edmund W. Littlefield When bids were read on March 4, 1931, at the Bureau of Reclamation office in Denver, Six Companies came in lowest by $5 million with a bid of $48,890,955. Shown at the dam site are (left) Six Companies' Norman Gallison, Henry J. Lawler, and (center) Edmund O. Wattis; (third from left) Walker Young; Charles Shea; Bureau commissioner Elwood Mead; superintendent Frank Crowe; Bureau engineer Raymond Walter; and Warren A. Bechtel, first vice president of Six Companies. Outside a diversion tunnel, Edmund O. Wattis (left) confers with frequent partner Henry Morrison. After William H. Wattis died of cancer, in September 1931, he was succeeded as Six Companies president by Warren Bechtel. Upon Bechtel's death in 1933, Edmund O. Wattis became president, succeeded by Henry Morrison the following year. |
