Wikipedia 1882–1946
Francis Trenholm (Frank) Crowe was born in Trenholmville, Quebec, Canada, on October 12, 1882. He was the son of John and Emma (Wilkerson) Crowe, who had married in Brooklyn, New York in 1880. His family moved to Fairfield, Iowa in 1888, and then to various towns in Maine, New Jersey, and Massachusetts over the next several years. After graduating from the Dummer Academy located in Byfield, Massachusetts in 1901, Crowe attended and graduated from the University of Maine in 1905 with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering. The University's Francis Crowe Society is named in his honor.
Crowe attended a guest lecture in 1904 given by Frank Weymouth (another Univ. of Maine graduate, class of 1896, M. ASCE) of the newly created U.S. Reclamation Service (USRS), which became the Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) in 1923. Crowe signed up for a summer job with the USRS in 1904 and worked on a survey party on the Lower Yellowstone River. After taking and passing the civil service examinations in January 1905, and then graduating in 1905, Crowe began a 20-year career with the USRS/USBR.
Crowe returned to the Lower Yellowstone and worked as an engineering aid and instrumentman on the construction of the headworks for its irrigation system, during 1905 and 1906. In 1906, Crowe briefly left the USRS and worked for contractor James Munn (M. ASCE) as his superintendent of construction in charge of several large reinforced-concrete siphons, sluiceways, and spillways. Crowe returned to work for the USRS in 1908 and worked as engineer and superintendent of construction on a pumping station on the Minidoka Project in Idaho. In 1910 and 1911, Crowe was engineer and then superintendent of construction on the Snake River Storage Project, which involved the investigation of storage possibilities at Jackson Lake, Wyoming. That work included the location and construction of a 35-mile-long wagon road through the Teton Range and the construction of the original Jackson Lake Dam. In December 1911, Crowe was appointed assistant superintendent of construction on Arrowrock Dam (an ASCE National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, or NHCEL) in Idaho. While working at Arrowrock Dam (height 349 feet), Crowe developed a comprehensive concrete conveying and distributing system, as well as a unique pipe system for transporting cement pneumatically. Crowe also worked to enhance the use of cableways in the construction of the concrete dam, improving their efficiency.
Crowe was superintendent of construction on the USRS’s Boise Project in Idaho from 1913 to 1915, when he returned to and enlarged Jackson Lake Dam. In 1916, he was appointed Project Manager of the Flathead Project in Montana, which work included the construction of McDonald Dam. In 1920, Crowe briefly left the USRS and formed a partnership, Rich Marcus and Crowe, but returned to the USRS in 1921 and was appointed the Construction Engineer on Tieton Dam (height 235 feet) on the Yakima Project in central Washington. After completing Tieton Dam in 1924, Crowe was appointed General Superintendent of Construction in the office of the Chief Engineer, located in the USBR’s Denver Office. In that position, Crowe performed general supervision of all construction activities of the USBR in the western 17 states.
In 1925, the USBR changed its policy of handling the construction of its major project by government forces, which dramatically changed his duties, and Crowe left to join the construction firm of Morrison-Knudsen in Boise, Idaho. With Morrison-Knudsen, he worked in the role of superintendent in charge of construction of Guernsey Dam (1927) on the North Platte River in Wyoming. Morrison-Knudsen had recently signed a partnership with the larger Utah Construction Company to build dams and Crowe worked on them all around the western United States, including Van Giesen (Coombe) Dam (1928) in California and Deadwood Dam (1930) in central Idaho.
The USBR’s Hoover Dam in Black Canyon on the Colorado River was open for construction bids in 1931 and Crowe developed the cost estimate for Morrison-Knudsen, which had joined the Six Companies, Inc. syndicate. Crowe had studied the Black Canyon site and the design for the dam for several years and his cost estimate was perfect. Six Companies won the contract with its bid of about $54 million and they were so confident in Crowe’s abilities that he was immediately appointed its general superintendent in charge of building the record 726-foot-high curved gravity concrete dam. Construction of the 4.4 million cubic yard thick-arch concrete Hoover Dam (also an ASCE NHCEL) by Crowe, his staff, and up to 5,000 workers was completed a full two years ahead of schedule.
In 1936, Crowe and Six Companies moved on to the construction of Parker Dam, also on the Colorado River, located downstream of Hoover Dam. Its construction involved a foundation excavation up to 235 feet below the original riverbed. and downstream of Hoover Dam. In 1937 and 1938, Crowe also constructed the Copper Basin and Gene Wash Dams nearby in California for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Crowe then moved on to the construction of Shasta Dam in northern California, completing the 602-ft-high curved-gravity concrete dam in 1944. On Shasta Dam, Crowe decided to employ an innovative 460-foot-tall central “headtower”, which was connected to seven cableways and enabled the placement of concrete anywhere in the dam with its crest length of 3,460 feet. Crowe also employed a 9.5-mile-long, 36-inch-wide conveyor belt system for the delivery of processed sand and gravel materials to the dam site.
Frank Crowe was either a construction engineer or directed the dam’s overall construction on an amazing total of 19 dams, most of which were USRS and USBR dams. Frank Crowe was elected an Associate Member of ASCE in 1910, a Member in 1915, and an Honorary Member in 1943. In February 1945, in New York City, The Moles presented its “Moles’ Award” to Crowe, with the presenter citing “his skill, ingenuity, and engineering ability in the construction of vast public works, notably in the field of the world’s highest and deepest dams.” The award’s plaque read “The Moles’ Award to Frank T. Crowe for Outstanding Achievement in Construction With the Admiration and Esteem of Men Engaged in Construction.” Frank married Marie (Sass) Crowe, the sister of his close friend, Robert Sass, in Helena, Montana on September 9, 1909. While pregnant, Marie passed away on October 17, 1911, and the baby was lost as well. Frank then met and married Linnie (Korts) Crowe on December 9, 1913, in Boise, Idaho and they had two daughters, Patricia and Elizabeth. Crowe retired after completing Shasta Dam in 1944 and died of a heart attack while at Redding, California on February 26, 1946.
References
- Rocca, Al M., America's Master Dam Builder: The Engineering Genius of Frank T. Crowe, University Press of America, 2001.
- Transactions, ASCE, Vol. 113, 1948, pgs. 1397-1403.