Background
Savage was born on December 25, 1879 near Cooksville, Wisconsin, United States, the son of Edwin Parker Savage, a farmer, and Mary Therese Stebbins. As a boy he worked on the family farm.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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Savage was born on December 25, 1879 near Cooksville, Wisconsin, United States, the son of Edwin Parker Savage, a farmer, and Mary Therese Stebbins. As a boy he worked on the family farm.
Except for two years at a private school in Spring Green, Wisconsin, he attended local public schools and graduated from Madison High School. He received his B. S. in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1903.
Savage spent the summers of 1901 and 1902 working on topographical surveys for the United States Geological Survey in Ohio.
Upon graduation, Savage was offered a teaching position at Purdue University but chose instead to accept a job with the newly created United States Reclamation Service (renamed the Bureau of Reclamation in 1923). His first assignment was as an engineering aide in the Idaho Division, where he was involved with survey work on the Minidoka Dam project on the Snake River.
In December 1903 he was appointed assistant engineer and was transferred to the division headquarters in Boise, Idaho, where he was assigned to investigations, designs, and construction. In July 1905 he was promoted to engineer in charge of designs and supervision of work under construction within the Idaho Division.
Savage left the Reclamation Service in 1908 to join Andrew J. Wiley's engineering consulting practice in Boise. This was a period of rapid growth in the construction of irrigation and hydroelectric projects in the American West, and Wiley's practice flourished. During the eight years Savage was associated with this company. He designed several important projects, including the Salmon River Dam, the Swan Falls Power Plant on the Snake River, the Barber Power Plant on the Boise River, and the Oakley Reservoir Dam.
The Reclamation Service also retained Savage as a special consultant on the design of the gates for the Arrowrock Dam on the Boise River, then the world's highest concrete dam. In 1916, Savage rejoined the Reclamation Service as a designing engineer in charge of all civil engineering design in the service's new office of the chief engineer in Denver, Colorado.
Beginning in 1922, Savage worked as a consulting engineer in the investigation, design, and construction of various projects outside the Bureau of Reclamation. He was retained by the Tennessee Valley Authority to help with the designing of such major dams as Norris, Wheeler, and Pickwick. He assisted in the design of the Madden Dam for the Panama Canal Zone. Prior to World War II, he did consulting work for the island of Puerto Rico; the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Australia; the state of California; and the cities of Tacoma, Seattle, and Los Angeles.
He was promoted in 1924 to chief designing engineer and made responsible for all civil, electrical, and mechanical design.
He retired from government work in 1945, thereafter serving as the Bureau of Reclamation's chief consulting engineer. Savage formed an international engineering consulting firm after his retirement in 1945 and was actively involved in postwar reconstruction projects throughout the world. His most noted design was for a dam (never built) on China's Yangtze River that would have far surpassed any dam yet constructed. In 1951 he was made a member of the International Development Advisory Board of President Truman's Point Four program. Savage continued to work as a consulting engineer into his eighties.
He died in Englewood, Colorado.
John Lucian Savage was well-known as the head of the design work on such massive and well-known dams as Grand Coulee, Shasta, Parker, and Imperial. In all, Savage designed nearly sixty major dams in the United States, as well as hundreds of smaller engineering works. His association with this unprecedented number of large engineering projects led to his becoming known as America's first "billion-dollar engineer. " His greatest work: Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, it was by far the largest dam ever constructed. Savage introduced artificially cooled mass concrete, which dramatically reduced the setting time of concrete, allowing for faster construction. He also introduced the trial load method of arch analysis, which removed theorized and actual stresses in a finished structure. He received John Fritz Medal in 1945, Henry C. Turner Gold Medal Award in 1946, Washington Award in 1949, U. S. Department of Interior Gold Medal Award in 1950 and others. He was induced in Reclamation Hall of Fame in May 1950.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
Quotations: Savage once said: "I took pleasure in joining enterprises that have as their objective the development of human relations. "
Throughout his career he was noted for his indefatigability, rigorous work habits, and commitment to public service. Despite his fame and success, he remained modest and reserved. Savage never saw money as an object of his work.
On June 1, 1918, Savage married Jessie Burdick Sexsmith. (Savage was widowed in July 1940, and on January 14, 1950, he married Olga Lacher Miner. Both marriages were childless. ) He brought home an orphaned child from his trip to China.
