The usual advice for boxers is to look for an opening to use your strength. Growing up on a farm in Taylor, Idaho, Ralph Lester Wadsworth was able to attend college thanks to his boxing skills, and he rarely stopped looking for an opening during a five-decade career building roads, bridges and other key projects in Utah, Idaho and Montana.
Just weeks after being named ENR’s Intermountain Legacy winner, the founder of Ralph L. Wadsworth Construction and Wadsworth Development died on December 25, 2025 at the age of 91. He leaves behind iconic projects and his children, who continue the building tradition that trained them to dominate.
“When I think of Ralph, I think of someone who really listened, genuinely cared about you and always greeted you with a warm, welcoming smile,” says Joey Gilbert, Utah AGC President and CEO.
“This kindness and humility were the basis of his leadership,” he adds. “Ralph’s impact on Utah’s construction industry was extraordinary, and his service to the Utah AGC and his recognition as a Ryberg Award winner reflected a lifetime of building with integrity and purpose. He built more than roads and bridges, he built people, trust and a legacy.”
RLW built the bobsleigh and luge track for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Lauded by athletes, the track was the “most challenging project” the company has ever completed, Wadsworth said.
Photo courtesy of Ralph L. Wadsworth Construction
Building reputation
Wadsworth studied structural engineering at the University of Idaho. He married his high school sweetheart, Peggy Kahler, and they raised seven children together. After college, he worked for companies in St. Louis and Salt Lake City before starting his own engineering consulting firm, where he designed landmark projects such as the Valley Music Hall in Bountiful, Utah, which features a 115-foot-diameter concrete dome ceiling, and the Washington, DC temple for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Wadsworth also began taking on small construction projects alongside his brother, who had his general contracting license. In 1983, Wadsworth sold his engineering firm and went full-time as a general contractor, establishing the heavy/civil firm Ralph L. Wadsworth (RLW) Construction in Draper, Utah.
“My father was always looking for ways to control his own destiny,” says Tod Wadsworth, vice president of RLW.
In his autobiography, “Building a Life,” Ralph Wadsworth expressed this desire to have more control over his projects. “I decided that the fewer subcontractors I had to put on one of my projects, the better. So I started looking for specific jobs like bridges, culverts and water tanks,” he wrote.
Tod Wadsworth says the desire for control, along with the growing skills and interests among his brothers, helped diversify the parts of a project the company could handle on its own. “When we took on more than one project it was usually because the kids developed a passion for certain things,” she says. “My brother Ty really liked working with cranes and so we moved on to doing our own construction.”
RLW built a reputation for quality bridge construction and other civil engineering projects including piling, shoring and underground utility work as well as geotechnical engineering. In 1999, the company was selected to build the bobsled and luge track at a site outside Park City in preparation for hosting the 2002 Winter Olympics. Wadsworth called it “the most challenging project” the company had ever undertaken.
“My father was always looking for ways to control his own destiny.”
—Tod Wadsworth, Vice President, RLW Construction
“It was a reinforced concrete structure about 2,000 feet long, a constantly curving track. Each foot of the track had a different cross-section,” he wrote.
Wadsworth’s sons, Nic and Con, led the construction team and would have to call in reinforcements from time to time.
“Sometimes in the afternoon, during a concrete pour, we would get an emergency call from the guys at work, and all of us in the office would rush to the site to scrub concrete before setting up. It was a project we were very proud of,” Wadsworth wrote.
RLW was also an early pioneer of accelerated bridge construction, building bridges adjacent to a site and then moving them to site using self-propelled modular transport (SPMT) systems. While using the SPMT system helped speed up projects, Wadsworth was put off by the cost and went back to looking for a way to take more control of the process.
“My children helped improve this system by building a sliding system,” he wrote. “With a new support structure in place, the new bridge could be pulled with jacks and held in place by Teflon slides.”
RLW used its sliding technique on more than 40 projects across the region.
Community Building
When it came to philanthropy, Wadsworth preferred to tap into his skills rather than his checkbook.
“He was an author and always happy to help, but he was sorry [the act of] building, striving, it came more from the heart,” says Tod.
Wadsworth gave his services to the town of Draper over the years, designing and building a new center for the Boys and Girls Club, an equestrian center, and most notably the Bear Canyon Pedestrian Bridge on one of the town’s popular hiking trails.
Brad Jensen, project manager for Draper City Parks and Recreation, worked closely with Wadsworth on these and other projects. “The bridge really became a community project as more groups got involved. We never could have done something like this on our own; he made sure it happened,” says Jensen.
In the late 1980s, Cal, Ralph’s second oldest son, started his own eponymous commercial construction company that continues today. In 1991, eldest son Guy launched Wadsworth Brothers Construction, a civil and heavy-duty company operating in five western states. In 1996, Wadsworth and his son Kip founded Wadsworth Development. Kip continues as president of the company with business developments in 11 western states.
Ralph retired in the mid-2000s, selling ownership of RLW to his sons Con, Tod and Kip. In 2009, the brothers sold the company to Texas-based Sterling Construction and remain in their leadership positions today, continuing their father’s legacy.
