Francis Trenholm Crowe ( – ) was a Canadian civil engineer and employee of Morrison-Knudsen, who later became in 1931, the General Construction Superintendent of the Hoover Dam construction contract. Born in Trenholmville,

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, Crowe attended the

Governor Dummer Academy The Governor's Academy is an independent school north of Boston located on in the village of Byfield, Massachusetts, United States (town of Newbury), north of Boston. The Academy enrolls approximately 412 students in grades nine through twelv ...

, matriculating to the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. It is classifie ...

where he graduated in 1905 with a degree in

civil engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

. The University's Francis Crowe Society is named in his honor. Crowe became interested in the American west during a lecture given by Frank Elwin Weymouth (1874-1941), a civil engineer with the

United States Bureau of Reclamation The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...

. He signed up for a summer job before the end of the lecture. That summer job began a 20-year career with the reclamation service that would change the face of the American west. In 1924, Frank Crowe left the United States Bureau of Reclamation to join the construction firm of Morrison-Knudsen in

Boise, Idaho Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown ar ...

. Morrison-Knudsen had recently signed a partnership with the larger Utah Construction Company to build dams. While working on the

Arrowrock Dam Arrowrock Dam is a concrete arch dam in the western United States, on the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, east of Boise. Opened in 1915, it is located on the border of Boise and Elmore counties, upstream of the Lucky Peak Dam and reservoi ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...

, Crowe pioneered two practices that are crucial to the construction of large dams. The first was a pneumatic delivery system to transport concrete and the second was a system of overhead cables to allow the pneumatic concrete to be pumped at any point on the construction site. With this technique, Crowe built some of the largest dams in the American west, including the Hoover Dam,

Parker Dam Parker Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam that crosses the Colorado River downstream of Hoover Dam. Built between 1934 and 1938 by the Bureau of Reclamation, it is high, of which are below the riverbed (the deep excavation was necessary in ...

downstream from Hoover; Copper Basin and Gene Wash Dams on the Colorado Aqueduct system; and

Shasta Dam Shasta Dam (called Kennett Dam before its construction) is a concrete arch-gravity dam across the Sacramento River in Northern California in the United States. At high, it is the List of tallest dams in the United States, eighth-tallest dam in ...

in Northern California. All these dams were important but none approached the mythic scale or mystique of Hoover Dam. He retired in 1944 to his cattle ranch near Redding, California, where he died of a heart attack on February 26, 1946. He had a wife, Linnie, and two daughters.

Popular culture

The Hoover Dam construction project and Frank Crowe's role (portrayed by actor

Jay Benedict Jay Benedict (April 11, 1951 – April 4, 2020) was an American actor who spent most of his life and career in the United Kingdom. He was frequently cast as American characters in British films and television programmes. He was best known for hi ...

) was dramatised in an episode of the BBC's 2003 docudrama television miniseries ''

Seven Wonders of the Industrial World ''Seven Wonders of the Industrial World'' is a 7-part British docudrama television miniseries that originally aired from to on BBC and was later released on DVD. The programme examines seven engineering feats that occurred since the Industri ...

''. The project and Frank Crowe's role was also dramatized in The History Channel's series '' America: The Story of Us'' in episode 9 entitled Bust.

References

External links

Time: By a Damsite, June 19, 1944
American civil engineers Canadian emigrants to the United States 1882 births 1946 deaths University of Maine alumni People from Estrie Anglophone Quebec people The Governor's Academy alumni {{US-engineer-stub

Popular culture

Further reading

References

External links