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Robert McKee, El Paso contractor, dies
On this day in 1964, Robert E. McKee, one of America's most important
contractors, died in El Paso. The Chicago native moved to Texas in 1910
and started his own contracting firm three years later. By 1935 he had
built the naval docks and the Marine Hospital at the naval base in San
Diego. In Hawaii he built various military facilities, including the
power plant at Pearl Harbor and the Air Corps Double Hangars and a
3,200-man barracks at Hickam Field. He built the largest military center
in Texas, Camp Bowie, near Brownwood, in a record time of ten months. He
constructed large military installations in the Panama Canal Zone.
During one year he had 42,000 workers on his payroll. He was responsible
for building the facilities for the Los Alamos Atomic Energy Project in
New Mexico, for which he received the Army-Navy "E" award for high
achievement in October 1945. In the 1950s McKee constructed several
large facilities at the United States Air Force Academy. In 1959 he was
the major contractor for the new Los Angeles International Airport. His
company also built a large percentage of El Paso's major structures.
McKee was a philanthropist and patron of the arts in El Paso, and was
honored as a "conquistador" by the city in 1962. Santa Fe Industries, a
holding company of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, acquired
Robert E. McKee, Inc., in 1972.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- MCKEE, ROBERT EUGENE, SR.
- CAMP BOWIE
- ATCHISON, TOPEKA AND SANTA FE RAILWAY SYSTEM
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- New oil well starts Ranger boom (1917)
- First bank in Texas founded (1822)
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