Robert McCulloch, along with his two siblings, inherited his Grandfather Beggs's fortune on 1925.  Pursuing engineering, he attended Princeton University in 1928, but transferred to Stanford a year later.  He took with him his love for boat racing, and by the time he graduated in 1932, he had won 2 national championship trophies for outboard hydroplane racing.
     Two years after he graduated, he married Barbra Ann Briggs, whose parents were the Briggs of Briggs and Stratton.  His first manufacturing endeavor was McCulloch Engineering Company, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  There he built racing engines and superchargers.  In his early 30's he sold the company to Borg-Warner Corp for 1 million dollars.
     McCulloch then started McCulloch Aviation, which he moved to California within three years.  In 1946 he changed his company's name to McCulloch Motors.  Building small gasoline engines, his competitors included his in-laws and Ralph Evinrude.  Evinrude led the market for boat motors, while Briggs and Stratton pulled ahead in the lawn mower and garden tractor market. 
     It was the chainsaw niche that McCulloch dominated, beginning with the first chainsaw with his name on it, manufactured in 1948.  By the next year, McCulloch's 3-25 further revolutionized the market, with the one man, light weight chainsaw.
     Robert McCulloch's empire continued to expand, with the creation of McCulloch Oil Corporation in the 1950's.  C.V, Wood, who had been involved with the planning of the original Disneyland and the first Six Flags park in Arlington Texas, became the president of McCulloch Oil. McCulloch Oil pursued oil and gas exploration, land development and geothermal energy.
     In spite of Evinrude's market lead, McCulloch continued to pursue McCulloch Motor's quest for the outboard market during the next decade.  This quest led him to Lake Havasu, in that search for a test site.  The search turned into something far beyond the imagination and expectations of most people, and changed the course of Arizona history.
     McCulloch was famous for innovation and new ideas, which he brought with him to the outboard business.  One of these ideas was marketing a complete line of factory matched boat, motor, and trailer combinations.  The customer could purchase the complete package, already put together and rigged at the factory.  This idea became very popular 25 years later with such companies as Bayliner.  The McCulloch boats were very innovative as well, with features not seen on any other boat.  But that is another story.  McCulloch also produced a very successful racing version of the 75 HP motor, with a custom lower unit.  McCulloch also had the first surface gap spark plug, 100 to 1 oil mixture,  the first modern low profile fishing motor, the first diesel powered outboard, and much more.  Some projects which were in the experimental phase were a 125 HP four cylinder, radial 2 stroke outboard.  It measured 18" wide, 26" long and 52" high and weighed 260 lbs.  It was called the R-120, and incorporated a turbo-supercharger plus re-entry turbine.  It had fuel injection plus force feed lubrication to eliminate the need for mixing gas and oil.  It had power steering, power tilt and trim and a variable pitch prop.
     To properly utilize his newly developed Lake Havasu test site, McCulloch built a dynamometer boat, a virtual floating laboratory for testing his outboards.
     Lake Havasu, named for the Mohave word "Havasu", which means "blue water", sparked the imagination of McCulloch, who purchased 3500 acres of lakeside property along Pittsburgh Point, the peninsula that would eventually be transformed into "the island".  The property had originally been purchased from the Santa Fe Railroad, by World War II veterans.
     In 1963, on the courthouse steps of Kingman, Arizona, McCulloch purchase a 26 square mile parcel of barren desert, that would become the site for Lake Havasu City.  At the time, it was the largest single tract of state land ever sold in Arizona, and the cost per acre was under $75.
     McCulloch Properties, Inc., a subsidiary of McCulloch Oil, was the division that that developed Lake Havasu City.  One of the first steps was to purchase Holly Development, in 1964, to utilize their licensed real estate force.
     McCulloch had purchased 11 Lockheed Electras, and formed McCulloch International Airlines, to fly in prospective buyers from all over the country.  Splashy magazine ads enticed snow-weary would be customers to take a free flight to Paradise.  When they arrived, they were greeted by one of the Holly salesmen, who taxied them around in the trademark white Jeep.  In all, there were 40 identical vehicles in the fleet, said to be the largest contingent of white Jeeps in the world.
     To spur the growth of the infant city, in 1964 McCulloch opened a chainsaw factory in the new community.  Within two years there were three manufacturing plants, with 400 employees.  Yet it was the purchase of the London Bridge, in 1968, that gave the worldwide exposure to the development..  McCulloch was searching for a unique attraction for his city, which eventually took him to London.
     By the early 60's, it was apparent that the London Bridge was gradually sinking into the River Thames.  It was decided that a new bridge would need to be built.  But rather than razing the bridge, it was decided to put the historic landmark on the auction block.
     When casting his bid for the London Bridge, McCulloch doubled the estimated cost of dismantling the structure, which was 1.2 million dollars, bringing the price to $2,400,000.  He then added on $60,000, a thousand dollars for each year of his age. This earned him the winning bid, and in 1968 he became the new owner of the London Bridge.
     It took three years to complete the project.  The structure was dismantled brick by brick, with each piece marked and numbered.  The granite pieces were stacked at the Surrey Commercial Docks, and then were shipped through the Panama Canal, to Long Beach California.  From Long Beach the granite blocks were trucked 300 miles inland.
     The peninsula was then transformed into an island, as a mile long bridge channel was dredged, giving purpose to the transplanted landmark.  Included with the bridge purchase, were the unique lampposts, molded from French cannons captured during the 1815 battle of Waterloo.
     Unfortunately, this created a drain on McCulloch's resources, as the cost to dismantle, transport, and reassemble the bridge turned out to much higher than anticipated.  Consequently,  the line of McCulloch outboard motors dropped by the wayside, along with some of McCulloch's other endeavors.
     Lake Havasu City became a huge success, and Robert McCulloch realized his dream of transforming the Arizona desert.  He died in 1977.

Waterman-the first outboard motor

It was commonly believed for many years that Ole Evinrude invented the outboard motor.  We have all heard the story of how Ole wanted a quicker way to cross the lake for ice cream for Bess, but three years prior to that, Cameron B Waterman applied for a patent for the same contraption-the outboard motor.  Waterman was the first to produce and distribute an outboard motor, and he ended up selling 30,000 of them.  He continued until about 1916, when he sold his operation and patent to the Arrow company, and he moved on to other endeavors.
     Meanwhile, Evinrude was still building and selling his outboard motors, even after Arrow went out of business in 1924.  Evinrude eventually laid claim to the invention, an assertion that went undisputed by Waterman.
     Evinrude continued to claim title of inventor until 1950, when Mercury did some digging in the name of public relations.  In 1949 Mercury hired an investigator to research at the US Patent Office, and found Waterman's patents. The company invited Waterman to the New York Boat Show, where he was celebrated as the outboard's real inventor.
     In 1950 Mercury featured Waterman in an ad sitting on a dock with a Mercury, poking holes in the prevailing belief that Evinrude invented the motor. Waterman, who always said he had invented the outboard because he was tired of rowing, was pictured with the statement: "Thanks to Cameron B Waterman, fishing is all fun because he didn't like to row."  Waterman received a new 1950 Mercury 25 for his efforts.
     Waterman, who died in 1955, says that he ordered a motorcycle in 1902, according the the Grosse Ile Historical Society in Michigan.  When he removed the engine to clean it, hanging it on the back of his office chair, it occurred to him that he could hang it on the transom of a rowboat, attach a propeller to it and drive it.
     "If I hinge the engine to the back of the boat, it could be used to steer as well as propel it," Waterman's account states.  "Then in my mind, I provided it with a tiller and mounted a gasoline tank near the tiller to make the whole a self-sufficient unit. One final idea was to allow the engine to tilt up to a horizontal position to protect it in the absence of a keel or skeg."
     "I took my drawings to a machine shop in Detroit to a friend who agreed to build it if I would get the motorcycle engine. I wrote to Glenn Curtiss and got a 3HP 4-cycle engine." Waterman wrote.
     In February 1905 they took their working model to Grosse Ile in the Detroit River and attached to a 15 ft steel rowboat.  "Although the river was full of icecakes, the tryout was a complete success except for the fact that once a piece of ice got caught between the chain and sprocket causing the chain to run off the sprocket," Waterman said. "We rowed ashore to replace the chain."
     It was then that someone suggested Waterman dub the invention "outboard motor", instead of "boat propelling device" or "porta-motor" as he'd been calling it.  The name stuck, and at that point they knew it worked.
     In 1907 they sold 3,000 motors and about the same in 1908.  Then in 1909, when the Evinrude hit the market, their sales doubled, "Because that convinced people that we had a practical machine and not a silly gadget, " Waterman said.
     They sold the business in 1917 due to other interests.  Waterman entered the army during World War I, and later became a patent attorney.