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In 1968, the famed London Bridge that crossed the Thames River in London was slated to be demolished in order to make way for a new bridge. At the same time, American industrialist, Robert P. McCulloch, Sr. was building a new community in the Arizona desert. In an effort to bridge his new city, Lake Havasu, with adjoining desert islands and create a tourist attraction, he purchased the 137-year old bridge for nearly 2.5 million dollars. Because McCulloch wanted to recreate the London Bridge with as much of the original material as possible, each of the granite stones, weighing a total of 3,000 tons, were individually numbered and shipped more than 10,000 miles to Lake Havasu, Arizona. Sundt organized and categorized the stones prior to reassembling the bridge. In 1972, a year after Sundt began the project, the London Bridge was opened to traffic on American soil. |
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On December 1, 1942, Sundt was asked to build a top-secret project for the government in the mountains northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the ensuing 14 months, dams, pipelines, sewers, streets, sewage treatment facilities, power resources, housing, schools and hospitals were built. Although the project was completed in 1943, it wasn't until August 6, 1945, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped, that those who worked on the project knew of its purpose. Los Alamos was built to house the scientists who created the first atomic bomb. |
Los Alamos, New Mexico  |
The need for the Los Alamos Flood Retention Structure was born out of a disastrous forest fire, which created conditions that could have damaged a highly secure nuclear reactor complex at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Technical Area 18 (TA-18), located in the bottom of Pajarito Canyon, was left vulnerable to flooding after a US Forest Service prescribed burn in the spring of 2000 escaped control and devastated 48,000 acres of wilderness and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) property in and around Los Alamos. The fires came alarmingly close to TA-18, but were extinguished before actually reaching facilities. However, soon afterward, officials from the Albuquerque district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that the charred landscape and altered soil conditions would no longer play their natural role in controlling runoff during heavy storms. With the annual rainy season fast approaching, it became clear that while one national disaster had been avoided, another loomed on the horizon. The Corps declared an emergency situation, and Sundt Construction, Inc. was contacted for a fast-track, design-build project to construct a flood retention structure in Pajarito Canyon that would protect TA-18 and the downstream community of White Rock from flooding. This roller-compacted concrete dam included 66,000 cubic yards of concrete (390 feet wide by 66 feet high and 50 to 93 feet thick) was designed and built in 60 days. |
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Los Alamos Dam  |
In 1968 as astronomy was reaching popularity, Sundt was awarded the contract to build the housing facility for one of the largest telescopes in the Western Hemisphere atop Kitt Peak in southern Arizona. The construction of the housing and dome for the 150-inch, 375-ton telescope was a challenge. The complex design and the remote site location added to the difficulties of hauling equipment up a mountain and to the site. In addition, chilling winds and searing heat took its toll on the crew who completed the project in 1970. Sundt returned to Kitt Peak in March 1992 to build the WIYN telescope enclosure. This 3.5-meter telescope is housed in a three-story, 7,000 square foot domed steel enclosure. The modern structure is made almost entirely of steel with the only concrete pour being for the shaft on which the telescope sits. The project was completed in November 1992. |
Kitt Peak Observatory  |
In 1965, Sundt and a joint-venture partner built Launch Pad 39-A at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The pad, which was completed in 1966, was the site of many Apollo missions including Apollo 11, which put man on the moon. It was also used to launch the space shuttle Columbia. |
Launch Pad 39-A