Frank Elwin Weymouth

Background

Frank Elwinwas Weymouth born on June 2, 1874 in Medford, Maine, the third son and sixth of at least seven children of Andrew Jackson Weymouth, a farmer, and Charlotte Prudence (Powers) Weymouth.

Education

He received his education at the public schools of Medford and nearby Fort Fairfield and at the University of Maine, from which he graduated with the B. S. degree in civil engineering in 1896.

Career

Weymouth's first professional positions, with the City of Malden, Massachussets, near Boston, and with the Metropolitan Water District for the Boston area, took him into the field of water-supply planning and construction that was to occupy most of his life. In 1899, after several months as assistant city engineer in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he joined the engineering staff of the Isthmian Canal Commission, to survey proposed routes in Panama and Nicaragua. One of his associates there was Arthur Powell Davis, and when, in 1903, Davis became a supervising engineer of the newly established United States Reclamation Service, Weymouth joined him. Weymouth's early activities in the Reclamation Service centered on irrigation projects in Montana, North Dakota, and Idaho. In 1908 he became supervising engineer for the Idaho district and directed, among other projects, the construction of Arrowrock Dam on the Boise River, 349 feet high and at that time the highest dam in the world. In 1916 Weymouth was named chief of construction for the Reclamation Service, and in 1920, chief engineer. It was a period of remarkable engineering accomplishment, notably in dam design and construction, as best exemplified by the multipurpose Hoover Dam in Boulder Canyon on the Colorado River. Weymouth's feasibility report provided the basis for its construction, but neither Weymouth nor his chief, Davis, saw the project to completion. In 1923 Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work reorganized the Reclamation Service and brought in a new head, and Weymouth resigned the next year. For two years he conducted his own engineering firm, Brock and Weymouth, in Philadelphia. He then went to Mexico for the John G. White Engineering Corporation, in charge of irrigation and reclamation projects on behalf of the Mexican government. Congressional passage in late 1928 of the Swing-Johnson Bill, authorizing construction of the Boulder Canyon dam, opened the way for Weymouth's last major work, the Colorado River Aqueduct. The City of Los Angeles, needing a new supply of water for its rapidly growing population, had looked to the proposed dam as a possible source and in 1929 appointed Weymouth to study the feasibility of an aqueduct from the Colorado. Later that year a group of thirteen cities organized the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to carry out the project. Weymouth was named chief engineer and, in 1931, general manager. The undertaking involved complex problems of planning, finance, and construction. Weymouth's estimates of practicability convinced the area's electorate, which in 1931 accepted a proposed $220, 000, 000 bond issu - one of the largest ever passed - by a margin of 5 to 1. When completed, the system comprised 242 miles of main aqueduct and 150 miles of laterals, with over 100 miles of the total length in tunnel. There were four important dam structures, five pumping stations to lift the water 1, 600 feet, and 237 miles of high-voltage transmission lines from Hoover Dam to provide power for the pumps. The construction was undertaken across a desert whose geological and topographical conditions were largely unknown. The project was completed June 18, 1941. A month later, at the age of sixty-seven, Weymouth died of a heart attack at his home in San Marino, Calif. A Catholic, he was buried in Calvary Cemetery, Los Angeles.

Achievements

• He was notable for engineering the multipurpose Hoover Dam in Boulder Canyon on the Colorado River and the Colorado River Aqueduct. All told, the Colorado River Aqueduct was one of the most impressive engineering accomplishments of its time.

Personality

Weymouth was known to his associates as a single-minded man, with no hobbies and few outside interests.

Connections

He was married twice: on December 3, 1900, to Mary Maude Lane, who died in January 1937; and on November 10, 1938, to Barbara Turner, who survived him. There were no children by either marriage.

Father:

Andrew Jackson Weymouth

A farmer

Mother:

Charlotte Prudence (Powers) Weymouth

Spouse:

Barbara Turner

Spouse:

Mary Maude Lane