Safety-Quality-Integrity

Pictorial History

Click here to view a pictorial history of Koss Construction Company. We welcome your comments.
History
| Click To View Gallery |
The company started from rather meager beginnings, from 1912 to 1921 we built bridges, culverts, dams, sewers, retaining and flood walls, railroads, substations, power plants, ice houses, trolley lines, dredging, stables, an extension on the Iowa State Capitol Building, office buildings, and even a house or two.
Koss was quite heavy in the structure field from the beginning until 1946. During that time, we built large structures in 11 states and many of them were major river crossings. The largest of these was the Fort Snelling-Mendota Bridge south of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota that was built in 1926. This bridge had 13 reinforced concrete open spandrel ribbed arches that were each 304 feet long. The total length of the bridge was over 4,100 feet and was 200 feet high with a 120-foot distance to the river.
Koss started in the concrete paving field in 1921. We paved on US Highway 30 in Clinton County, Iowa during that year. In 1927, we took the company on the road to Peru, South America. The project was a toll road from Port of Callao to the Capitol city of Lima and took two years to complete. This was the only time that work was ever done outside the limits of our 48 contiguous states.
During the 1940's, during World War II, the company paved twenty one (21) airports in the states of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska and New Mexico. Since then Koss has built, extending, or reconstructed pavement on an additional twenty two airport projects.
Since the beginning of the paving operations, Koss has paved more than 72,000,000 square yards of concrete pavement. This equates to a 24 foot wide road from San Francisco, California to New York City to El Paso, Texas.
In fact, a replica of one of the company's pavers, built in the 1930's, is located in the Smithsonian Institute.
The Company has a strong tradition of being a leader in the industry. It is a tradition that we are very proud of.
Hard Roaders

Click here to view an article from the
ACPA Concrete Pavement Progress
publication about our 100 year anniversary.
Video History
Click here to view a video of a paving project by our Missouri Division in 1954.

Click here to view a video of the first dedicated pavement cold milling machine in 1976.

History
KOSS Awards
Koss Featured Project