Washington Group International |
The roster of big home-grown Boise businesses slims down again, as stockholders at Washington Group International - formerly and long known to Boiseans as Morrison-Knudsen Corporation - on Thursday agreed to sell the company to URS Corporation of San Francisco.
M-K was a pride of Boise for many years, whose origins run back to the construction in 1905 of an irrigation canal in the Boise area. It long has been a major international building contractor and a big player in the city and state and the politics of both.
It ought to register with Idahoans as a major event - and it is - but it may not. At this point, a lot of Boise's history has begun to recede. We talked this morning with one long-time Boisean who said he nearly ran off the road when he heard on his car radio an announcer talk about "Morrison-Nutson" corporation . . .