Dennis Washington is a Missoula businessman whose companies have run copper mines, railroads, tugboats and shipyards across the American and Canadian West. He was born July 27, 1934, in Spokane, Washington, and holds both U.S. and Canadian citizenship. Few private fortunes in the Northwest are tied as closely to Montana ground as his.
A Montana upbringing
Washington grew up in Spokane, in Bremerton, Washington, and in Missoula. His parents separated when he was young, and he lived with his mother. His father worked in overseas construction, and the family was not wealthy. After high school he took construction jobs in Alaska and Montana.
He went into business for himself in 1964 and founded Washington Construction, a firm built around highway contracts. In the 1970s the company moved into mining work and dam construction. That experience set up the deal that made his name in Montana.
Butte and the railroad
In 1986 Washington acquired a copper and molybdenum mine in Butte and reopened it. Anaconda had stopped mining at the Continental Pit in 1983, and Montana Resources bought the property and reopened the pit in 1986. Montana Resources remains one of the Washington Companies, and the Butte mine has been central to his holdings since. According to Wikipedia’s Butte entry, mining there stopped in 2000 and resumed in 2003.
A second Montana venture followed almost immediately. On October 31, 1987, Washington began a 60-year lease of Burlington Northern’s southern Montana main line, running from Sandpoint, Idaho, to Huntley, near Billings. The new carrier was Montana Rail Link, headquartered in Missoula. The spin-off drew controversy at the time because it came during contract talks between Burlington Northern and the United Transportation Union.
Montana Rail Link operated more than 900 route miles in Montana and Idaho. In January 2022, BNSF agreed to pay $2 billion to end the lease early. The federal Surface Transportation Board approved the return to BNSF control on March 8, 2023, and BNSF took over operations on January 1, 2024. The line is now the MRL Subdivision of BNSF.
The wider Washington Companies
Montana is only part of the portfolio. The Washington Companies, the umbrella for his holdings, include Seaspan ULC, a Canadian coastal marine transport, ship docking, repair and shipbuilding business, along with Southern Railway of British Columbia. Others are Envirocon, which does environmental remediation and restoration work, Modern Machinery, a heavy equipment dealer, and Aviation Partners, which develops blended winglets for business jets. Seaspan Corporation, a containership owner and manager, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
In 1996 Washington Construction acquired Morrison-Knudsen Corporation of Boise, Idaho, creating Washington Group International. His son, Kyle Washington, is co-chairman of Seaspan Marine Corporation.
Honors and giving
Washington has collected a long list of awards. They include the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award in 1990, the Horatio Alger Award in 1995, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1996, induction into the American Mining Hall of Fame in 2007, and the Maritime Museum of British Columbia’s SS Beaver Award for Maritime Excellence in 2012.
His name is also on a Missoula landmark. Washington gave $1 million toward construction of the University of Montana’s football stadium in 1985. Groundbreaking was that September, and the stadium opened October 18, 1986. It is called Washington-Grizzly Stadium and holds 25,217 fans after an east grandstand expansion in 2008.
Life outside the office
Washington and his wife, Phyllis, live in Missoula. He also owns an estate on Stuart Island, British Columbia, with a fishing lodge and golf course. His yacht, Attessa IV, has been featured in Forbes, which describes him as a self-made billionaire whose fortune came from construction and mining.
It is a long way from highway contracts in the 1960s to a business footprint that stretches from the pit in Butte to the docks of British Columbia, and much of it still runs through Missoula.
Sources: Wikipedia entries on Dennis Washington, Montana Rail Link, Washington-Grizzly Stadium and Butte, Montana; Forbes.