RIVAL FORCES: BEST and HOLT

PART ONE:

In a two-part series, author Robert Pripps drills deep to uncover the entrepreneurial and fiercely competitive spirit that propelled Daniel Best and Benjamin Holt to an eventual consolidation launching Caterpillar. In the first part presented in this issue, the rise of two young businessmen is presented against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving nation.

Two family names – Holt and Best – are inexorably linked to the great name of Caterpillar, the Caterpillar tractor and Caterpillar Inc. of Peoria, Illinois. As the Industrial Revolution developed around the world, the Holts and Bests took their places alongside other great men of ingenuity, ambition and charismatic leadership who launched great industries: Deere, McCormick, Deering, Oliver, Ford, Massey and Harris. These visionary leaders mechanized American agriculture and, in the process, they also changed our way of life.

The opening of the American West

America of the mid-1800s would be virtually unrecognizable to most of us today. The Civil War had not yet been fought and slavery remained a fact of life in this country. Rail transportation was only available along the East Coast. The “golden spike” was driven in Promontory, Utah, in 1869, celebrating completion of America’s first transcontinental railroad. The first commercial telegraph message was sent in 1844. The telephone was invented in 1876 and the light bulb in 1879. The U.S. was on the verge of rapid expansion.

In January 1848, carpenter James Marshall was building a waterwheel-powered sawmill for John A. Sutter on the American River in California’s Sacramento Valley. When he discovered a pea-sized nugget of gold in Sutter’s Creek, he showed Sutter his find. Sutter made Marshall promise to keep the discovery a secret, but