Gerald Lyda
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gerald Lyda was born and raised in Burnet County, Texas in the United States. He was on his own at an early age and worked for various ranches throughout the Texas Hill Country where he could be close to the horses, cattle and ranching life that he loved.
During World War II, he became a carpenter with a large El Paso-based general contractor, working in Texas, Utah and Colorado. During this time, he broke horses, worked on various ranches and learned the art of saddlemaking from legendary rodeo producer, saddlemaker and businessman, T. C. "Buck" Steiner of Austin, Texas.
To support his wife and family, he left ranching and dedicated himself to the construction industry, joining Farnsworth & Chambers, a large general contractor headquartered in Houston, Texas, in 1947. With the support and guidance of mentor H. Alvin Lott, Lyda earned a reputation for being an innovative, cost-conscious project superintendent who could deliver projects on time and under budget.
In 1960, he formed his own construction company, Darragh & Lyda, with Burnet County rancher Steinmetz Darragh. In the mid-1960s, a joint venture between the San Antonio-based company and H. A. Lott Inc. built the Tower of the Americas and most of the major HemisFair '68 structures in San Antonio, Texas.
The Lyda organization grew to be one of the most successful general contractors in Texas. Such projects as the Alamodome, the expansion of the University of Texas Memorial Stadium, the Hyatt Hill Country Resort Hotel, the San Antonio Convention Center, the Westin La Cantera Resort Hotel and the Fiesta Texas theme park, as well as hospitals, hotels, banks and office buildings, have significantly re-shaped the skylines of major Texas cities. The company and its subsidiaries were regularly ranked among the Top 400 Contractors by Engineering News-Record and was consistently ranked among the Top 3 commercial building contractors based on billings in San Antonio by San Antonio Business Journal. In 2003, Lyda sold his construction business to Swinerton, Inc. of San Francisco, California.
After the sale, Lyda retired to his beloved La Escalera Ranch, just south of Fort Stockton, Texas. Lyda had owned or traded more than 880,000 acres (3600 km²) of ranch real estate by 1999, including the sprawling Ladder Ranch in southeastern New Mexico which Lyda eventually sold to television mogul Ted Turner and his actress wife Jane Fonda. Lyda and his family currently operate the 340,000 acre (1400 km²) La Escalera Ranch, which spreads across four Texas counties: Reeves, Pecos, Brewster, and Baylor. La Escalera Ranch has been ranked by Texas Monthly magazine as one of the largest cattle ranches in Texas.
