Lyman D. Wilbur Papers, 1900-1994

Lyman Dwight Wilbur was a civil engineer and executive for Morrison-Knudsen Company, Inc. (M-K) He was born in California in 1900. His father, Curtis D. Wilbur, was a California Supreme Court Justice and served as Secretary of the Navy under the Coolidge Administration. Wilbur studied civil engineering at Stanford University, where his uncle Ray Lyman Wilbur was university president. In 1932, Harry Morrison offer Lyman a job in Los Angeles, working on irrigation projects throughout that state. That started a 39 year career for Wilbur, moving up to the positions of Vice President of engineering and president of M-K's International Engineering Company subsidiary; positions he held at the same time. After his retirement from M-K in 1970, Wilbur went into private consulting well into his 80's. He passed away in 2001 at the age of 100.

With decades of work in civil engineering, Lyman Wilbur received many awards and participated in a variety of record breaking construction projects. In 1952, when M-K was digging the Broadway Tunnel in San Francisco, Wilbur designed a system to hold back slipping earth on Russian Hill. In 1966, Engineering News-Record named him Construction's Man of the Year for managing war-time construction in Vietnam for the U.S. That article noted "Mr. Wilbur doesn't fit the stereotype picture of the construction stiff. A tall, courtly man who wears rimless glasses, he likes classical music and gardening, neither smokes nor swears, rarely takes a drink. And to find a man of his age-nearly 66-holding down one of the key jobs in a combat zone comes as a surprise." Also in the 1960s, He managed the deepest pier construction ever for the Tagus River Bridge in Lisbon, Portugal (270 feet below water at high tide). For achievements like these, Wilbur received what his peers considered the highest award for civil engineering: the John Fritz Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1972.

Sources: Engineering News-Record, "Construction's Man of the Year." February 17, 1966 McGraw-Hill. Page 99. EmKayan, "Emkayan Profile: Lyman Wilbur: A Construction Leader of the 20th Century." Morrison-Knudsen Company Inc. January 1992. Page 5.