Edmund Orson Wattis Jr. (March 6, 1855 – February 3, 1934), was oldest of the brothers who founded

Wattis Brothers The Wattis Brothers was a 19th-century railway contracting firm operated by three brothers Edmund Orson Wattis Jr. (1855–1934), Warren L. Wattis (1865–1928), and William Henry Wattis (1859–1931). It was founded in the early 1880s by William ...

and the

Utah Construction Company The Utah Construction Company was a construction company founded by Edmund Orson Wattis Jr., Warren L. Wattis and William. H. Wattis in 1900. History The Wattis Brothers received funding from David Eccles, Thomas Dee, Joseph Clark and Jam ...

Early life

Wattis was born on March 6, 1855, at a farm in Uintah,

Utah Territory The Territory of Utah was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 4, 1896, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Utah, the 45th st ...

, the second of seven children born to Edmund Orson Wattis and Mary Jane Corey. Edmund was 21 when he left his home in Uinta to start a career in heavy construction, working on bed grading for the Canadian Pacific and Colorado Midlands.

Railway contractors

With his brother William, he formed a firm to lay track for the expanding railroads. Wattis Brothers prospered until the

Panic of 1893 The Panic of 1893 was an economic depression in the United States. It began in February 1893 and officially ended eight months later. The Panic of 1896 followed. It was the most serious economic depression in history until the Great Depression of ...

. While William continued to try to find construction projects, Edmund focused his energies on running a sheep ranch the brothers had established in the Weber Valley. This ranch would later provide the financial strength for the large construction projects to come. In 1900, the Wattis Brothers again tried their hand as partners in contracting. They founded the Utah Construction Company. A short four years after its founding, Utah Construction Company was awarded the contract to build the

Feather River The Feather River is the principal tributary of the Sacramento River, in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California. The river's main stem is about long. Its length to its most distant headwater tributary is just over . The main stem Feather ...

route between

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

and

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...

. This $60 million contract was challenging, but after five years, very profitable. The Feather River route was complete for the Western Pacific Railroad in 1911. The Utah Construction Company thrived, and soon captured a large share of the tunneling, grading, and track projects in the rapidly expanding railroads in the mountain west. Seeing the end of railroad expansion, the Wattis Brothers looked for ways to diversify their construction risks. Edmund Wattis married Martha Ann Bybee on June 25, 1879. They had five daughters and three sons. In 1917, Utah Construction Company was awarded the seven million dollar O'Shaughnessy Dam contract, a controversial project that impounds the

Tuolumne River The Tuolumne River ( Yokutsan: ''Tawalimnu'') flows for through Central California, from the high Sierra Nevada to join the San Joaquin River in the Central Valley. Originating at over above sea level in Yosemite National Park, the Tuolumne ...

in the

Hetch Hetchy Valley Hetch Hetchy is a valley, reservoir, and water system in California in the United States. The glacial Hetch Hetchy Valley lies in the northwestern part of Yosemite National Park and is drained by the Tuolumne River. For thousands of years before ...

of California's

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...

mountains. Success with the O'Shaughnessy Dam convinced the Wattis Brothers to bid on more dam projects. In 1922, Utah Construction Company formed a partnership with the Morrison-Knudsen Company of Boise, Idaho. With

Frank Crowe Francis Trenholm Crowe ( – ) was a Canadian civil engineer and employee of Morrison-Knudsen, who later became in 1931, the General Construction Superintendent of the Hoover Dam construction contract. Born in Trenholmville, Quebec, Crowe atte ...

as the chief engineer, the MK UC partnership successfully built dams throughout the American west. In 1931, the Wattis Brothers spearheaded the formation of

Six Companies Six Companies, Inc. was a joint venture of construction companies that was formed to build the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in Nevada and Arizona. They later built Parker Dam, a portion of the Grand Coulee Dam, the Colorado River Aqueduct ...

to build the

Hoover Dam The Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado, Black Canyon of the Colorado River (U.S.), Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. Constructed between 1931 and 1936, d ...

which was the largest construction project ever tackled by the US Government up to the time. He did not live to see it completed though; after serving as chairman of Six Companies, E.O. Wattis died in his

Ogden, Utah Ogden ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Weber County, Utah, Weber County, Utah, United States, approximately east of the Great Salt Lake and north of Salt Lake City. The population was 87,321 in 2020, according to the United States Census ...

home on February 3, 1934, of a heart attack. He was buried at Ogden City Cemetery.

References

Sources

* Sessions, Gene A & Sterling D. Utah International, A Biography of a business. * Stevens, Joeseph E. (1988). Hoover Dam, An American Adventure.

External links

Damn Big Dam
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wattis, Edmund Orson 1855 births 1934 deaths Businesspeople from Ogden, Utah People from Utah Territory