Harry W. Morrison / Morris Hans Knudsen (Founders, Morrison-Knudsen Co.)

MORRIS HANS KNUDSEN
Burial Date: November 22, 1942
Location: Section B-48-4

HARRY W. MORRISON
Burial Date: July 22, 1971
Location: Section B-48-7

Morris Knudsen, a Danish immigrant and Nebraska farmer, came to Idaho in 1905 to work on the New York Canal with a team of horses and a fresno scraper. On the project, the fifty year old Knudsen met twenty seven year old Harry Morrison, who had started as a timekeeper on the Minidoka Dam on the Snake River and was now a concrete superintendent for the Reclamation Service - "the two hit it off like finger and thumb". In 1912, with $600 in capital, a few horses and scrapers, and a dozen wheelbarrows, they decided to form their own construction company.

During World War II, Morrison-Knudsen built airfields, storage depots, and ships; it expanded into foreign construction - an effort that now includes over sixty countries.