The Greatest Engineer That Ever Lived

George W. Goethals called him one of "the greatest engineers that ever lived" and when the building of the Panama Canal was in doubt Theodore Roosevelt turned to him for help. He was John F. Stevens (1853-1943), an explorer, a railroad executive, but first and foremost, a civil engineer. The papers of this remarkable American have recently been donated to Georgetown by his granddaughter, Mrs.John U. Hawks of Goshen, Indiana, and his great-grandson, Donald H. Stevens of Baltimore, Maryland.

Stevens' fame as a railroad engineer brought him work throughout the country and indeed the world. Starting in the mid-1870s he worked for a succession of American railroads: the Sabine Pass and Northwestern Railroad in Texas; the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad in New Mexico; the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Railroad. But it was while working with the Spokane Falls & Northern Railroad in 1889 that he became acquainted with James J. Hill, the energetic president of the Great Northern Railway. Hill was building a transcontinental railroad through the northernmost states and assigned Stevens to explore the route west of Havre, Montana. In the deep snow and bitter cold of winter Stevens discovered the now famous Marias Pass, the key passage across the Continental Divide. Other major discoveries were made in Washington state, most notably the pass near Lake Wenatchee which now bears his name, and in 1890 he completed the Cascade Tunnel through the Cascade Mountains.

In early 1906 Stevens was appointed by President Roosevelt the chief engineer of the troubled Isthmian Canal Commission. The conditions in the Canal Zone were chaotic, but Stevens, drawing on his years of railroad experience, immediately reorganized the work force, the supply lines, and the engineering staff. He supported Col. William Gorgas in his fight for adequate health measures in the Zone, and most importantly he persuaded President Roosevelt to accept the view of a locked canal rather than a sea-level canal. Construction was well under way when he resigned at the end of the year, frustrated by political maneuvering in Washington. His successor, George W. Goethals, made this estimation: ". . . the Panama Canal is his greatest monument . . . I found when I went to Panama that his organization was about as perfect as any could make it. The result was that more than one half of the work was done for me in advance."

The Stevens papers document all aspects of Stevens' colorful career. The archive includes considerable material on his work in Russia reorganizing the Trans-Siberia and Chinese Eastern railroads (1917-1923); a variety of maps and drawings; photographs; printed ephemera; medals and books owned by Stevens; diaries; an unpublished autobiography; and correspondence form various notables, among them William Howard Taft, Elihu Root, and Newton D. Baker.