Our History

Carrothers Construction Company was originally established in 1921 as Carrothers Brothers Construction by H. H. and John Carrothers in Topeka, Kansas. By 1923 the name had been changed to Carrothers Construction Company and became a Charter Member of The Kansas Contractors Association and has maintained its membership ever since.

In 1945 the corporate offices were relocated to Paola where it continues to operate today. Over its 100-year history, Carrothers Construction has built a wide array of projects, many of which with historic significance. The original football stadium at the University of Missouri-Columbia, many of the art-deco trestle bridges in and around Kansas City’s Swope Park, and many of the original historic landmark buildings throughout the Midwest and especially in Kansas City are a small sampling of projects built by Carrothers Construction.

Throughout its long history, however, what Carrothers really became known for and excelled at on a national level was its ability to construct extremely difficult and challenging water treatment and wastewater treatment facilities. From the swamplands of the Gulf Coast to the snowcapped Rocky Mountains and all points in between, Carrothers has built hundreds of water treatment facilities, many of which are still fully operational and in use.

Today, Carrothers has taken its 100 years of experience in building water treatment facilities and incorporated them into building high end, large scale, state-of-the-art Aquatic Centers for municipalities and communities throughout the Midwest. And, while we have records to show we built water treatment facilities from our very beginning in 1921, we are not 100% sure when we built our first municipal swimming pool (there are gaps in physical records up until 1945). We discovered however, in 1996 while constructing a new aquatic center for the City of Wellington, Kansas, a commemorative plaque on the original bathhouse that was dated 1938 naming Carrothers Construction as the contractor, so we know we have been building pools that long.

Carrothers corporate motto of “Building water projects since 1921” (and swimming pools since at least 1938!) still holds true today and will for years to come!