On January 10, 1932, the Bureau of Reclamation made bid documents for the Hoover Dam construction project available to interested parties at $5 a copy (equivalent to $100.00 in 2023[2]).
[4] Because of the project's immense size and the fact that it was the first dam on the Colorado River, no single contractor had the resources to make a qualified bid alone.
Wattis, along with the company's vice president, Andrew H. Christensen, asked Harry W. Morrison of Morrison-Knudsen to join them.
After they realized the bid would be much higher than expected, the Wattis Brothers and Morrison-Knudsen convinced four additional companies to join.
In February 1930 The Six Companies, Inc. was incorporated as a joint venture and they began working out a bid enlisting the help of Morrison-Knudsen employee Frank T. Crowe to do so.
The dam was dedicated in September 1935 but it took an additional nine years (1938–1947) under relative secrecy, to fix serious leaks with a supplemental grout curtain.
From Lawler the railroad went north for seven miles (11 km) to Saddle Island and then east to the Three-Way Junction gravel plant, now submerged under Lake Mead.