Stephen Davison Bechtel (1900-1989) was a construction engineer and business executive whose firm, the Bechtel Corporation, concentrated on building oil pipelines and refineries, power plants, and factories.

Bechtel was interested in expanding the scope and the variety of his firm's operations, and he foresaw opportunity and profit in California's booming oil industry. He persuaded his father to take on the company's first oil pipeline job for Standard Oil of California in 1928; the line ran from the San Joaquin Valley to the Pacific. Bechtel became president of the Bechtel Company three years after his father's death in 1933. In 1937 he started up a new venture with a college friend, John McCone, the Bechtel-McCone Corporation. The firm specialized in engineering and building oil refineries and chemical plants.

Work in World War II

With the outbreak of World War II, both the Bechtel Company and Bechtel-McCone shifted their operations to meet defense...