Reginald Heber Thomson (usually R.H. Thomson; 1856 – January 7, 1949) was a self-taught

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

civil engineer. He worked in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

state, mainly in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, where he became city engineer in 1892Ross Anderson, "Earthmovers", ''Seattle Metropolitan'' magazine, May 2006, p. 63 and held the position for two decades. Alan J. Stein wrote that Thomson "probably did more than any other individual to change the face of Seattle" and was responsible for "virtually all of Seattle's infrastructure".Alan J. Stein
Thomson, Reginald Heber (1856-1949)
HistoryLink essay 2074, January 18, 2000. Accessed online April 14, 2007. ''(contains errors)'' Despite the scope of his work, no major portion of Seattle's infrastructure has ever carried Thomson's name. He was supposed to have been memorialized by the R.H. Thomson Expressway, proposed in 1960 but never built.David Wilma
Seattle City Council cancels R. H. Thomson Expressway on June 1, 1970
HistoryLink essay 2446, May 22, 2000. Accessed online April 14, 2007. Among his achievements were the

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

route through

Snoqualmie Pass Snoqualmie Pass is a mountain pass that carries Interstate 90 (I-90) through the Cascade Range in the U.S. state of Washington. The pass summit is at an elevation of , on the county line between Kittitas County and King County. Snoqualmie ...

, the Lake Washington Ship Canal, much of the paving of Seattle's roads and sidewalks, numerous bridges over rivers and valleys, and major improvements to Seattle's sewer system, as well as straightening and deepening the Duwamish River and developing the Cedar River watershed, now one of Seattle's major sources of drinking water. He was also responsible for much of the

regrading Grading in civil engineering and landscape architectural construction is the work of ensuring a level base, or one with a specified slope, for a construction work such as a foundation, the base course for a road or a railway, or landscape and g ...

of Seattle, taking down hills and filling in the mudflats, and played a major role in the creation of

Seattle City Light Seattle City Light is the public utility providing electricity to Seattle, Washington, in the United States, and parts of its metropolitan area, including all of Shoreline and Lake Forest Park and parts of unincorporated King County, Burien, N ...

(the public electric utility), the Port of Seattle, and the

Hiram M. Chittenden Locks The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, or Ballard Locks, is a complex of locks at the west end of Salmon Bay in Seattle, Washington's Lake Washington Ship Canal, between the neighborhoods of Ballard to the north and Magnolia to the south. The Ballard L ...

. Elsewhere, he consulted on projects such as the Rogue River Valley Irrigation Canal, water development for

Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (loc ...

, and power plants in Southeastern Alaska.

Early life

Born and raised in a " Scottish colony" in

Hanover, Indiana Hanover is a town in Hanover Township, Jefferson County, southeast Indiana, along the Ohio River. The population was 3,546 at the 2010 census. Hanover is the home of Hanover College, a small Presbyterian liberal arts college. The "Point," locate ...

, Thomson received three degrees from

Hanover College Hanover College is a private college in Hanover, Indiana, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Founded in 1827 by Reverend John Finley Crowe, it is Indiana's oldest private college. The Hanover athletic teams participate in the H ...

: a Bachelors in 1877, a Master of Arts in 1901 and an honorary

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

, also in 1901. After his baccalaureate, he worked as a surveyor, then followed his father to Healdsburg Institute in

Healdsburg, California Healdsburg is a city located in Sonoma County, in California's Wine Country. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 11,254. Owing to its three most important wine-producing regions (the Russian River, Dry Creek, and Alexander Vall ...

, where his father served as principal and Thomson as a mathematics teacher. Thomson accompanied T.B. Morris to what was then the Washington Territory, now Washington State, where Morris planned to start a coal mine. He arrived September 25, 1881, 30 years to the day after the

Denny Party The Denny Party is a group of American pioneers credited with founding Seattle, Washington. They settled at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. History A wagon party headed by Arthur A. Denny left Cherry Grove, Illinois on April 10, 1851. The part ...

, usually considered the city's founders. The day of his arrival, he met pioneer David Denny at a memorial service for the recently assassinated U.S. president, James Garfield. As an assistant to city and county surveyor F.H. Whitworth, Thomson was involved in the initial surveying and dredging of what would, years later, become the

Montlake Cut The Montlake Cut is the easternmost section of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound. It was completed in 1916 and is approximately long and wide. The center channel ...

of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. In 1884 he became the city surveyor, in which capacity he oversaw the building of Seattle's first sewers and the Grant Street bridge across the Duwamish River tideflats. During the period when Thomson was city surveyor, he and Whitworth also offered their services in the private sector, maintaining an office on Main Street in what is now the Pioneer Square district. In 1886, he resigned to work for the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern railroad, for whom he plotted the route from the northern end of Lake Washington (now Kenmore) east through Snoqualmie Pass to

Lake Keechelus Keechelus Lake () is a lake and reservoir in the northwest United States, near Hyak in Kittitas County, Washington. Approximately southeast of Seattle and a few miles southeast of Snoqualmie Pass, it is the source of the Yakima River. Keechelus ...

. Before returning to become a consulting engineer in Seattle, he spent some time in

Spokane Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Ca ...

, near the state's eastern border, where he was responsible for several railway terminals and two bridges. In at least 1890 and 1891, he worked for the then-separate city of Ballard (now part of Seattle), planning street improvements. As during his earlier work for Seattle, he continued at this time to work in the private sector, along with George F. Cotterill, who would soon work with Thomson for the city of Seattle and later go on to be Seattle's mayor. He applied in January 1891 for the job of King County surveyor. He was appointed in the position in May. However, after Edwin Hall Warner declined an appointment in May 1892 as Seattle city engineer, Thomson was again appointed to the city engineer position and resigned from his county position in July 1892.

Seattle city engineer

The regrades

Thomson became Seattle city engineer in 1892, three years after the

Great Seattle Fire The Great Seattle Fire was a fire that destroyed the entire central business district of Seattle, Washington on June 6, 1889. The conflagration lasted for less than a day, burning through the afternoon and into the night, and during the same sum ...

had destroyed more than half of the city's downtown, followed immediately by an unprecedented construction boom. He began the process of paving roads, building sidewalks, and adding sewer lines (often through areas that earlier engineers could not work out how to plumb). With his assistant Cotterill, he laid out

Lake Washington Boulevard Lake Washington Boulevard is a scenic, approximately , road through Seattle, Washington, that hugs Lake Washington for much of the route. There are views of the lake, small sections of rainforest, meadows, and views of the Cascade mountains. At ...

, initially conceived as a path for bicycles. From the time of his arrival in Seattle, Thomson had considered the hilly landscape and the extensive mudflats as obstacles to the city's growth. He launched several regrading projects, most notably the extensive

Denny Regrade The Denny Triangle is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, that stretches north of the central business district to the grounds of Seattle Center. Its generally flat terrain was originally a steep hill, taken down as part of a ...

, but also the Jackson regrade (between Main and Judkins Streets and 4th and 12th Avenues) and the regrading of Dearborn Street, with the 12th Avenue Bridge (now

Jose P. Rizal Jose is the English transliteration of the Hebrew and Aramaic name ''Yose'', which is etymologically linked to ''Yosef'' or Joseph. The name was popular during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods. * Jose ben Abin * Jose ben Akabya *Jose the Galil ...

Bridge) spanning Dearborn and connecting

First Hill First Hill is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is named for the hill on which it is located, which in turn is so named for being the first hill encountered while traveling east from downtown Seattle toward Lake Washing ...

to Beacon Hill. He also drove Westlake Avenue through from Downtown to Lake Union, the first flat route connecting the two. He also worked with railroad magnate

James J. Hill James Jerome Hill (September 16, 1838 – May 29, 1916) was a Canadian-American railroad director. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwes ...

to get the Great Northern Railway to bypass the already crowded waterfront with a 1906 railway tunnel under Downtown. Regrading of streets displaced of earth, which provided fill for the Duwamish River tide-flats. The latter became Seattle's industrial zone.

Utilities

Construction of Cedar River Pipeline, 1900

When Thomson became city engineer, Seattle was still pumping its water supply from Lake Washington to a reservoir on Beacon Hill. Water supply was beginning to limit the city's growth; with great difficulty, Thomson convinced the city to pipe in water from the Cedar River Watershed, to the southeast of Seattle in the Cascade foothills. A December 24, 1900 test of the system went so well that it went into routine use 18 days later, filling the reservoir in City Park, renamed that same year as Volunteer Park. The Cedar River did not supply Seattle only with water: the City Light Cedar Falls hydroelectric plant began operation October 4, 1904; from January 10, 1905, Seattle had electric streetlights, and from September 9 of the same year, the city-owned utility was selling electricity to private customers.

Further activities

With the city council's encouragement, Thomson took a half-year vacation and traveled Europe. It turned out to be a working trip: he studied the infrastructures of the great European cities, and came back with further visions for the future of Seattle. Among the resulting projects were the re-routing of Seattle's sewage outlet to West Point in

Magnolia ''Magnolia'' is a large genus of about 210 to 340The number of species in the genus ''Magnolia'' depends on the taxonomic view that one takes up. Recent molecular and morphological research shows that former genera ''Talauma'', ''Dugandiodendro ...

, then part of

Fort Lawton Fort Lawton was a United States Army post located in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington overlooking Puget Sound. In 1973 a large majority of the property, 534 acres of Fort Lawton, was given to the city of Seattle and dedicated as ...

, now part of Discovery Park; to this day, the site contains a major

sewage treatment Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding e ...

plant.

Later life

Overlapping his tenure as city engineer, Thomson was president of the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

board of managers (1905–1915). He also became increasingly interested in Seattle's waterways, which led him to resign as city engineer in 1911 to lobby the state legislature and otherwise help organize the Port of Seattle, for which he became chief engineer. Among his achievements for the port were the acquisition of Smith Cove and the land at the foot of Bell Street which is now home to the Port's headquarters. He was also largely responsible for dredging and straightening the Duwamish River delta, and for obtaining federal money for the Ballard Locks, now the

. From 1916 to 1922, Thomson served on the Seattle city council, while continuing to work as a civil engineer. After leaving the council, he continued working various places in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...

and

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

. He consulted on

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

's Rogue River Valley Irrigation Canal; built hydroelectric plants in Eugene, Oregon and surveyed plant sites in Southeastern Alaska; planned the water supply of

and consulted on the system for

Wenatchee Wenatchee ( ) is the county seat and largest city of Chelan County, Washington, United States. The population within the city limits in 2010 was 31,925, and was estimated to have increased to 34,360 as of 2019. Located in the north-central part ...

; briefly, in his seventies, he returned, temporarily, as Seattle city engineer in 1930 to finish the

Diablo Dam Diablo Dam is one of three dams along the upper Skagit River in Whatcom County, Washington and part of the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project that supplies Seattle with some of its power needs. The dam was built in Diablo Canyon, a gorge of solid g ...

on the

Skagit River The Skagit River ( ) is a river in southwestern British Columbia in Canada and northwestern Washington in the United States, approximately 150 mi (240 km) long. The river and its tributaries drain an area of 1.7 million acres (690,000& ...

after the death of city engineer William D. Barkhuff; consulted to the Inter-County River Improvement Commission for

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

and

Pierce Pierce may refer to: Places Canada * Pierce Range, a mountain range on Vancouver Island, British Columbia United States * Pierce, Colorado * Pierce, Idaho * Pierce, Illinois * Pierce, Kentucky * Pierce, Nebraska * Pierce, Texas * Pierce, We ...

Counties (the counties containing Seattle and Tacoma, respectively), and consulted on the construction of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge (now

Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge The Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge is a floating bridge in the Seattle metropolitan area of the U.S. state of Washington. It is one of the Interstate 90 floating bridges that carries the eastbound lanes of Interstate 90 across Lake Washingto ...

, carrying Interstate 90 across Lake Washington) and for the foundations of the

Tacoma Narrows Bridge The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a pair of twin suspension bridges that span the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound in Pierce County, Washington. The bridges connect the city of Tacoma with the Kitsap Peninsula and carry State Route 16 (know ...

. At the end of his life, Thomson wrote an autobiography, ''That Man Thomson'', which was published posthumously.

Legacy

In a sense, Thomson's chief legacy is the physical contours of the city of Seattle as it exists today, including the lay of the land, the transportation system, and the municipal utilities. Thomson was, without a doubt, Seattle's most important city engineer; in 1911 he had served in the office 19 of the 37 years it had existed. He was also often one of the most controversial: in February 1894, less than two years into his second period in the office, the Board of Public Works removed him from office; mayor James T. Ronald removed two members of the Board and reinstated Thomson. "A technical man with a streak of imagination… his disdain for those who did not share his vision also made him many enemies." Some of Thomson's projects remain controversial to this day. The

, his largest regrading project, sluiced away 6 million cubic yards (5,000,000 m³) of earth and numerous buildings, including the landmark Washington Hotel. Owners who didn't willingly sell were left with their buildings standing uselessly on pinnacles, the remaining land removed around them. The project was supposed to make way for a northward growth of downtown, but voters rejected

Virgil Bogue Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

's plan to rebuild the area in

Beaux-Arts style Beaux-Arts architecture ( , ) was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorpor ...

in 1912, leaving the area to develop piecemeal.Sharon Boswell and Lorraine McConaghy
City reshaped: up and down
''Seattle Times'', March 17, 1996. Accessed online April 14, 2007. As late as the 1970s, the neighborhood was merely "serviceable but seedy", then increasingly a center of Seattle's

bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Beer * National Bohemian, a brand brewed by Pabst * Bohemian, a brand of beer brewed by Molson Coors Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, origin ...

life, while also seeing a growth in condominium and office development.

Memorials

R.H. Thomson Expressway

Thomson was supposed to have been memorialized by the R.H. Thomson Expressway, which was scheduled to have run north from Interstate 90, through the Central District, Montlake and the Washington Park Arboretum, under Union Bay, and through

Ravenna Ravenna ( , , also ; rgn, Ravèna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 408 until its collapse in 476. It then served as the ca ...

to an interchange with a proposed

Bothell Bothell () is a city in King and Snohomish counties in the U.S. state of Washington. It is part of the Seattle metropolitan area, situated near the northeast end of Lake Washington. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 48,161 resident ...

Freeway. In 1972, voters rejected the project, which the City Council had definitively abandoned in 1970.

Broadview-Thomson Elementary School

Thomson is memorialized by a school: the Broadview-Thomson Elementary School (originally a junior high school) in Seattle's Broadview / Bitter Lake neighborhood.Broadview-Thomson
on the site of Seattle Public Schools. Accessed online April 14, 2007.

Mount Thomson

Mount Thomson was named for him. The prominent peak is located approximately 40 miles east of Seattle in eastern King County.

Notes

External links

Video

Eccentric Seattle: Reginald H. Thomson, King of the Hills
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomson, Reginald H. 1856 births 1949 deaths Hanover College alumni American civil engineers People from Seattle History of Seattle History of transportation in Washington (state) People from Hanover Township, New Jersey People from Healdsburg, California Engineers from California Engineers from New Jersey