This 1933 cover photo shows workers maneuvering a bomb into position on a platform in San Francisco Bay, at a very early stage of the Golden Gate Bridge project.

Coping with the titanic force of America’s largest river is one of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ perpetual responsibilities.

This June 1944 cover image shows a Navy Seabee driving a bulldozer out from the hold of a landing craft onto the beach of an unnamed Pacific island.

Bulldozers come first. This slogan crystallizes the role that engineering and construction played in World War II, where combatants were far more mobile than in previous conflicts.

This 1946 cover photo shows a stereoplanigraph, described as “one of the most universal and elaborate photomapping instruments ever constructed.”

One of the most notable reporting trips by an ENR editor took place in 1962 when ENR Editor-in-Chief Waldo G. Bowman attended the 29th Executive Meeting of the International Commission on Large Dams—held in Moscow—as a member of the U.S. delegation.

This cover photo shows Chinese engineers constructing a hand-made wooden bridge across the Tanai Hka River in Myanmar, then known as Burma.

During the 1950s and 60s, engineers and scientists sought ways to use nuclear weapons for major construction projects such as harbors, roads and even alternative routes for the Panama Canal.

This 1935 cover shows three workers in a sewer tunnel in Chicago that is being driven through blue clay.

In this selection of construction history from the ENR archives, a look at the successful rush to build in the middle of World War II what at the time was the world's largest office building.