Del E. Webb was born into a wealthy family on 1899 in Fresno, California. Webb saw his father go broke in 1914 in the construction game.

Webb himself took up carpentry and dropped out of high school to make it his vocation.

Webb loved baseball and apparently was good at it playing pitcher for minor league teams in the cities of Alameda, Modesto, and Oakland to name a few. For some unknown reason, Webb occasionally played under an alias name. In 1927, Webb played an exhibition game at San Quentin prison where he caught typhoid fever from an inmate and nearly died. For a year Webb unable to play baseball. At the time he caught typhoid, he was over than 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. During the fever his weight was 99 pounds. Webb and his wife, Hazel, moved to Phoenix, Arizona in to recover. After the recovery he went back to playing baseball.

Webb entered construction when he was doing a job and his paycheck bounced. When he told the owner of the property, the man told Webb to finish the job himself and he would be paid instead of the construction company. Webb's construction business in 1928 consisted of 10 wheelbarrows, 10 picks, 20 shovels, and a concrete mixer.

In 1933, during the Great Depression, Webb's company was worth $3 million. In 1935 Webb opened a branch office in Los Angeles, California, and in 1938 he built an addition on the Arizona State Capitol.

In the 1940s Webb was once again sick with what some think was the flu. When the doctor asked him if he drank, he stated he drank 10 to 20 bourbons a day. The doctor suggested cutting down on the liquor and Webb quit right there and then taking the attitude that the time he spent drinking, he could now spend working.

Webb was also a creature of habit in the eating area and dinner was a consistent New York steak with green beans, and possibly a baked potato. Desert was one scoop of vanilla ice cream.

In January of 1945, Webb and Al Topping bought the New York Yankees for $2.8 million, selling some land for $2 million to help finance the acquisition. This purchase included 450 players, and stadiums in New York, Newark, and Kansas City. During the time Webb and Topping owned the Yankees, they won 15 pennants as well as 10 World Series. Of course, baseball also was a great way to get contacts for construction deals.

In 1946, Webb was the head contractor for the Flamingo Hotel working for Billy Wilkerson at first and then Benjamin Siegel. Siegel growing frustrated over the building and apparently had an outburst. Webb grew somewhat fearful and Siegel stated to him "Don't worry, we only kill each other."

Webb built quite a name for himself with contracting many buildings in Las Vegas including the City Hall and the Clark and Valley High Schools.

During the 1940s, Webb became friends with Howard Hughes with their shared interests in flying. They also played golf together.

L.C. Jacobson, an employee of Webb and President of his company from 1962 to 1966, entered Webb into the casino business. Jacobson's gambling introduced him to Alfred Winter, who was running gambling operations illegally in Portland, Oregon, and later legally in Las Vegas. In 1951, Winter wanted to build a resort but didn't have the money. He asked the then executive vice president of Del Webb Corporation, Jacobson for help and got it. Jacobson took on the construction job for his company. And in return for his help, Jacobson was allowed to personally buy 20 percent of the stock in the new hotel - Sahara. In 1961, Jacobson brokered a deal turning over the interests of Winters' group including himself, in exchange for 1.5 million shares of Del Webb Corporation stock. Jacobson and Winters got tired of having 15 guys in the counting rooms taking a little for their bosses so they made a deal to sell Sahara to Del Webb for stock.

In 1952 Webb divorced his wife and would remain single until 1961, where his married Toni Ince, a millinery buyer for a Phoenix department store.

Sometime in 1960, Del Webb Corporation went public, with the purchase of Sahara making the first entry of a respected public stock corporation into Las Vegas gaming.

Del Webb Corporation bought the Thunderbird Hotel for $10 million in 1964, and the Lucky Club downtown. It expanded the Mint and it built a new casino at Lake Tahoe. Also during this year Webb and Topping sold the Yankees for $14 million.

On January 1, 1960, Webb opened the retirement community of Sun Ctiy is Arizona which sold 237 homes on the first weekend.

In the 1960s, Webb became more involved with Hughes. Apparently, Hughes would call Webb giving him instructions on where to meet him and they would talk to the early hours in the morning. Webb was definitely smart in doing what Hughes wanted as his company earned more than $1 billion worth of business from Hughes.

In early 1974 Webb fell ill. Since his illness in the 1940s, Webb had taken care of his health religiously and had a checkup at the Mayo Clinic every year. Webb was a non-smoker and had a "No Smoking" sign on his desk when most adult males smoked but it was lung cancer that killed Webb on July 4, 1974. Toni Webb now lives in Beverly Hills. Since neither of Webb's marriages produced children, much of Webb's fortune went into the Del E. Webb Foundation, which funds medical projects in Arizona, California and Nevada.

In 1978, Del Webb Corporation was the largest gaming employer in Nevada, with some 7,000 workers.

In 1988, Del Webb Corporation sold its last Las Vegas resort. It then brought the Sun City concept to Las Vegas with the construction of Sun City Summerlin for 14,000 seniors.

In October of 1998, the corporation opened models for Anthem, a master-planned community in southwest Henderson, which will include not only a section for the retirement market but also a gated country club community and a section of traditional homes. Some 12,000 homes will accommodate a population projected at 30,000.

Webb contributed much to Las Vegas, the Strip and to the public and on August 3, 1962, he was honored by being on the cover of Time Magazine. There is a Las Vegas website that states that Webb was Time's Man of the Year for 1964, and has a black and white cover of Time Magazine on the site. My research shows that this statement is just not true. I have the actual Time Magazine which is shown below. The date on the magazine is August 3, 1962, not 1964. In addition, Time Magazine has told me that Time's Man of the Year for 1964 was Martin Luther King, Jr., and Time's Man of the Year for 1962 was President John F. Kennedy. Maybe its wishful thinking of the Webb Corporation or the site that contains this information, but all my research has shown this to be untrue.