Elevation and Stadia Tables: For Obtaining Differences of Altitude for All Angles and Distances; Horizontal Distances in Stadia Work, Etc. Together ... Various Channels and Slopes. First Edition
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Irrigation works constructed by the United States government.
(Originally published in 1912. This volume from the Cornel...)
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Arthur Powell Davis was an American hydrographer, engineer, geographer and topographer.
Background
Arthur Powell Davis was born on February 9, 1861 on a farm near Decatur, Illinois. He was a nephew of John Wesley Powell and William Bramwell Powell and a cousin of Maud Powell, the violinist. His maternal grandfather, Joseph Powell, a Methodist minister, emigrated from England to America in 1830 and lived in several states, finally settling in Wheaton, Ill. His paternal grandfather, Joseph Davis, was born in Kentucky and moved to Illinois in 1825. He was a successful farmer and also served in the Black Hawk War. His son John was married to Martha Ann Powell in 1851 and they became the parents of ten children, of whom Arthur was the fifth.
In 1872 the family moved from Illinois to a farm near Junction City, Kan. , where John Davis engaged in the nursery business and stock raising. He became owner of the Junction City Tribune and in 1890 was elected to Congress by the People's Party, serving for two terms.
Education
Arthur Powell Davis attended the local high school and later graduated from the Kansas State Normal School at Emporia. He worked on his father's farm and also helped on the newspaper. After moving to Washington, in 1882, he continued his studies and in 1888 was graduated with the degree of B. S. from the Corcoran Scientific School of Columbian College (George Washington University).
Career
Davis began his technical career as assistant topographer in the United States Geological Survey in 1882. In 1884 he was appointed topographer of the Rocky Mountain Division, then for two years he directed the work of a section of the Irrigation Survey. Following this assignment he was for five years at the head of the topographic work of the United States Geological Survey in the Southwest Section.
Appointed hydrographer on July 1, 1896, he had charge in 1896 and 1897 of all stream measurements in the United States carried on by the Geological Survey. He was then detailed as United States hydrographer in charge of the examination of rainfall, stream flow, flood control, and related observations, under the Isthmian Canal Commission, for both the proposed Nicaragua and Panama Canal routes.
In 1911 he was engaged by the imperial czarist government to investigate the irrigation of the Kara Kum Desert, lying to the south and west of the Amu Daria (River), in Turkestan.
In 1914, with Major-General William L. Sibert and Daniel W. Mead, he was sent to China by the American National Red Cross to make a survey and investigation of the Huai River Conservancy Project in the provinces of Honan, Anhwei, and Kiangsu.
Following the organization of the United States Reclamation Service, Davis was appointed on July 1, 1903, a supervising engineer in that service. In 1908 he became chief engineer, and from 1914 to 1923 he served as director of the organization, succeeding Frederick Haynes Newell. Construction works for which he was responsible during these years included the Shoshone and Arrowrock dams, each when built the tallest dam in the world; the Elephant Butte Dam, on the Rio Grande River; the four-mile Strawberry Tunnel; the even more difficult six-mile Gunnison Tunnel, and many other important irrigation works.
Davis described these projects in his Irrigation Works Constructed by the United States Government (1917). Between the construction of the Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River and the early designs of Boulder Dam on the Colorado River--which Davis did not live to see completed, but for the general location and preliminary design of which he was responsible--the Reclamation Service under his direction constructed more than one hundred dams. In his report on the "Problems of Imperial Valley and Vicinity, " published in 1922, he collected, summarized, and digested the results of the previous investigations carried out by the Reclamation Service under his direction during the preceding twenty years.
During the time that Davis had been at its head, there had been accumulating considerable criticism of the Reclamation Service, originating apparently largely among landowners who desired to avoid the required repayments to the government of the cost of construction of the irrigation works. This culminated in June 1923 in the sudden announcement by Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work that in order to put the operation of the Reclamation Service in the hands of a business man, rather than an engineer, the position of director of the service was abolished and a new head would be called the commissioner of the Reclamation Service. The act at once brought on a controversy, and during the latter half of 1923 various engineering organizations made formal protests against the dismissal of Davis. A Congressional investigation was threatened, and there was much comment on the affair in the Engineering News-Record and in the newspapers.
Shortly after his dismissal Davis became chief engineer and general manager of the East Bay Municipal Utility District, including Oakland, Berkeley, and seven other California cities along the eastern shores of San Francisco Bay. About 1930 he was engaged by the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics as chief consulting engineer for irrigation in Turkestan and Transcaucasia. He described his observations in connection with this assignment in a paper entitled "Irrigation in Turkestan" (Civil Engineering, January 1932).
In 1933 he was appointed consulting engineer in the Bureau of Reclamation, at a time when the Boulder Dam project was under consideration. The appointment was no doubt gratifying to him, but he was then too ill to accept it. He had undergone a serious surgical operation in November 1931, from which he made a good recovery, but a later operation in February 1933 was not so successful, and he passed away in August of that year after a long and painful illness.
Achievements
He built up an organization that was a tribute to his competence, and its reputation was in no small part due to his ability to select and weld together an efficient personnel. He was also able, in spite of governmental limitations as to salaries and fees, to secure on his consulting boards the cooperation and service of engineers in private practice of high rank and ability, with varied and specialized experience.
In 1909 Davis was named a member of the board of engineers appointed to examine and report upon the engineeringproblems pertaining to the projected canal at Panama. Later, in 1915, he was a member of a committee of the National Academy of Sciences to study the slides in the Panama Canal at Culebra.
He was a fellow of the American Geographical Society, and a member of the Washington Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He served as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1920.
Personality
Davis was a man of striking appearance--tall and athletic, with prematurely white hair. He retained his surpassing physical vigor little diminished nearly to the end of his career and is said to have surprised his companions on difficult engineering trips. He continued to be a hard-working student all his life.
His attitude toward all his associates was one of striking kindliness. He could be firm when necessary, but he was slow to take offense and seemed to bear no permanent resentment against his severest critics and enemies.
Personally he was a man possessing the highest attributes of honor, straightforwardness, and sincerity. Practical to the last degree in material affairs, he was of the happy few who find in the work of their hands an opportunity to express in concrete form their aspirations for the welfare of their fellow men.
Interests
Davis's hobbies were hiking, literature, music, and art.
Connections
Davis was married on June 20, 1888, to Elizabeth Brown, of Washington, D. C. , who for many years devoted part of her time to assisting in the computations for the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. Her work included computing the ephemeris of the sun and assisting on planetary tables.
She passed away on April 13, 1917, and on June 19, 1920, Davis was married to Marie MacNaughton, of Washington, D. C. She with four daughters by his first marriage, Rena, Florence, Dorothy, and Elizabeth, survived him.
