Despite the rupture, Utah Construction continued subcontracting work to Bechtel, including what was to be the company’s biggest project to date: the building of a large section of the Northwestern Pacific Line through Northern California.
Working under a tight deadline, Warren replaced the traditional horse-and mule-drawn freight wagons with oversized gasoline-powered chain-driven trucks fitted with special aluminum dumping bodies, able 23
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
to hold tons of earth and rock. They were among the first dump trucks employed in America. The trucks, however, were no match for the weather. On many days, the heavy, seemingly unending north-coast rains created knee-deep mud that made work-and getting in supplies
-all but impossible. Fortunately, Bechtel had enough cement to continue working on the railroad line’s concrete structures until spring.
Other items, though-notably rubber boots and spaghetti for the largely Italian crew-were in short supply, and the workers were talking of walking off the job. Then, just when it seemed that a strike was imminent, a Parcel Post mule train arrived from San Francisco. Earle Lloyd recalled: “It was a sight to watch those pack trains of Parcel Post mules come in, thirty to a string, covered with mud and piled high with spaghetti and boots. “5
Two years later, in 1914, Bechtel completed the last 106-mile stretch of the line, and received his final check from the Wattises. Including a generous bonus, it totaled, by one estimate, nearly $500,000. Warren was delighted. He confided to an associate, “I never expected to have so much money in my entire life. “6
Suddenly well off, Warren and Clara acquired a two-story house on Perry Street in Oakland, where in 1912, their last child and first daughter, Alice Elizabeth, was born. As bigger jobs and even larger checks came in, they bought an even grander place in nearby San Leandro. The grounds featured a tennis court, a kitchen garden and a small open field, where Warren, still the farmer and ever the proponent of self-reliance, insisted that the boys grow tomatoes to sell at market. Clara, meanwhile, busied herself remodeling the house, adorning its gleaming oak floors with rare Oriental rugs recently purchased at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. Warren himself began taking time off from work. At the prodding of Warren junior, he even took up flying. Togged out in aviator goggles and a leather helmet, he soared over the Northern California countryside already being transformed by the roads and railways he had helped build.
A formal family portrait from 1915 shows the Bechtels in the first flower of their newfound prosperity. The males wear suits, ties and high, rounded starched collars. Clara and 3-year-old Alice are dressed in their Sunday best. The little girl, a towhead with a big floppy ribbon in her hair and a doll in her arms, sits in her father’s lap, looking loved and slightly spoiled. Ken, also fair-haired, seems bemused, as though he knows some marvelous secret the photographer can never share.
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DAD
The older boys, both of whom will soon be going off to war in France, look off into the distance, as if trying
