Warren Bechtel (1872-1933): Founder of engineering firm Bechtel Corporation

Burial site of Warren Bechtel

Warren Abraham Bechtel was born on September 12, 1872 and raised on a farm in Freeport, Illinois, which is 25 miles east of the Mississippi River.  He was a restless, energetic teenager who found time for school, farm and store chores, and the slide trombone. After graduation, he had a brief fling as a traveling musician, but realized that he couldn’t make a living with his trombone.

He went on to found the Bechtel Corporation, one of the world's largest engineering and construction services firms.

He worked as an employee of the burgeoning United States railroad industry in 1898 after his Oklahoma cattle ranch failed.

Over the next 20 years, Bechtel built a sizable contracting business that specialized in railroad and highway building. One of Bechtel's earliest major contracts was grading the site of the Oroville, California depot for the Western Pacific Railroad, then under construction.

In 1919, Warren Bechtel and his partners (including his brother Arthur) built the Klamath Highway in California, and in 1921 Warren Bechtel partners won a contract to build the water tunnels for the Caribou Hydroelectric Facility in that state. In 1925, Warren A. Bechtel's sons Warren Jr., Stephen, and Ken joined him and incorporated as W.A. Bechtel Company. In 1926, the new company won its first major contract, the Bowman Lake dam in California. The firm would later help engineer the famous Hoover Dam over the Colorado River, still considered the largest civil engineering project in U.S. history.
 
Bechtel died of an accidental insulin overdose while visiting Moscow in 1933. His son, Stephen D. Bechtel Sr., took over the firm upon his father's death.

Sources: Bechtel Corporation; Wikipedia