Delbert Eugene Webb was born on May 17, 1899, in Fresno, California, to fruit farmer Ernest and Henrietta Webb. He dropped out of high school, worked as a carpenter and ship fitter, and married nurse Hazel Lenora Church in 1919. Typhoid fever at 28 sent him to Phoenix, where he formed the Del E. Webb Construction Company in 1928. In 1942 the federal government hired his firm to build the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona, one of ten camps where Japanese Americans were detained. Construction began March 27, 1942, and about 5,000 laborers on double shifts finished a facility for more than 17,000 people in 21 days.

In 1946 Benjamin Bugsy Siegel hired Webb as general contractor for the Flamingo in Las Vegas, and when Webb grew alarmed at Siegel’s talk of killings, Siegel assured him the mob only killed its own. Webb later owned the Sahara and the Mint, becoming Nevada’s largest casino owner aside from Howard Hughes. With Dan Topping and Larry MacPhail he bought the New York Yankees in 1945 for $2.8 million; over 20 seasons the team reached 15 World Series and won 10 before CBS paid $11.2 million in 1964. On January 1, 1960, he opened Sun City, Arizona, and 100,000 people came the first weekend. He died in Rochester, Minnesota, on July 4, 1974.

• Webb and Topping bought out MacPhail in 1947 and took full control of the Yankees.
• Pueblo Gardens in Tucson, built in 1948, combined 600 houses with a shopping center.
• San Manuel, Arizona, was a company town for Magma Copper with streets, schools, a hospital and parks.
• Sun City opened with five home models, a shopping center, a recreation center and a golf course, and Webb made the cover of Time in August 1962.
• He was posthumously elected to the Gaming Hall of Fame in 2000.