View source for Frank Crowe

{{Short description|Civil engineer}}
{{about||the American physician|Frank W. Crowe|the English footballer|Frank Crowe (footballer)|the Australian rugby league player|Frank Crowe (rugby league)}}
{{Infobox person
| name   = Francis Trenholm Crowe
| image     = Frank_Crowe.jpg
| image_size     = 
| caption  =
| birth_date  = {{birth date|1882|10|12}}
| birth_place = Trenholmville, [[Quebec]]
| death_date  = {{death date and age|1946|02|26|1882|10|12}}
| death_place = [[Redding, California|Redding]], [[California]]
| occupation     = [[Civil engineer]]
| alma_mater         = [[University of Maine]]
| spouse         =
| parents        =
| children       =
}}

'''Francis Trenholm Crowe''' ({{birth date|1882|10|12}} – {{death date|1946|2|26}}) was a Canadian [[civil engineer]] and employee of [[Morrison-Knudsen]], who later became in 1931, the General Construction Superintendent of the [[Hoover Dam]] construction contract.

Born in Trenholmville, [[Quebec]], Crowe attended the [[Governor Dummer Academy]], matriculating to the [[University of Maine]] where he graduated in 1905 with a degree in [[civil engineering]]. The University's [[Francis Crowe Society]] is named in his honor. Crowe became interested in the American west during a lecture given by Frank Elwin Weymouth (1874-1941), a civil engineer with the [[United States Bureau of Reclamation]].<ref>Guide to the Frank Elwin Weymouth Papers, Water Resources Collection, Special Collections, [https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1c60329q/entire_text/ Honnold/Mudd Library 2009], Claremont University Consortium.</ref> He signed up for a summer job before the end of the lecture. That summer job began a 20-year career with the reclamation service that would change the face of the American west. In 1924, Frank Crowe left the United States Bureau of Reclamation to join the construction firm of [[Morrison-Knudsen]] in [[Boise, Idaho]]. Morrison-Knudsen had recently signed a partnership with the larger [[Utah Construction Company]] to build dams.

While working on the [[Arrowrock Dam]] in [[Idaho]], Crowe pioneered two practices that are crucial to the construction of large dams. The first was a pneumatic delivery system to transport concrete and the second was a system of overhead cables to allow the pneumatic concrete to be pumped at any point on the construction site. With this technique, Crowe built some of the largest dams in the American west, including the [[Hoover Dam]], [[Parker Dam]] {{convert|155|mi|km}} downstream from Hoover; Copper Basin and Gene Wash Dams on the Colorado Aqueduct system; and [[Shasta Dam]] in Northern California. All these dams were important but none approached the mythic scale or mystique of Hoover Dam.<ref>Borth, Christy. ''Masters of Mass Production,'' pp. 118-20, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, IN, 1945.</ref>

He retired in 1944 to his {{convert|20000|acre|km2|adj=on}} cattle ranch near [[Redding, California|Redding]], California, where he died of a heart attack on February 26, 1946. He had a wife, Linnie, and two daughters.<ref>{{Cite web|date=1999-02-07|title=Frank Crowe|url=https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/frank-crowe/|access-date=2020-06-06|website=Las Vegas Review-Journal|language=en-US}}</ref>

==Popular culture==

The Hoover Dam construction project and Frank Crowe's role (portrayed by actor [[Jay Benedict]]) was dramatised in an episode of the BBC's 2003 [[docudrama]] television miniseries ''[[Seven Wonders of the Industrial World]]''.<ref>{{IMDb title|qid=Q1006051|title=Seven Wonders of the Industrial World}}</ref>

The project and Frank Crowe's role was also dramatized in The History Channel's series ''[[America: The Story of Us]]'' in episode 9 entitled Bust.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-story-of-us/articles/episode-9-bust |title=America The Story of Us — Episode 9: BUST — |work=History.com |accessdate=2012-04-20 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20121001191213/http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-story-of-us/articles/episode-9-bust |archivedate=2012-10-01 }}</ref>

==Further reading==
* Rocca, Al M. America's Master Dam Builder: The Engineering Genius of Frank T. Crowe. University Press of Amer, 2001. {{ISBN|9780761821441}}

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20161021193137/http://content.time.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,711852,00.html Time: By a Damsite, June 19, 1944]
*[http://www.1st100.com/part1/crowe.html Frank Crowe]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crowe, Frank}}
[[Category:American civil engineers]]
[[Category:Canadian emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:1882 births]]
[[Category:1946 deaths]]
[[Category:University of Maine alumni]]
[[Category:People from Estrie]]
[[Category:Anglophone Quebec people]]
[[Category:The Governor's Academy alumni]]


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{{US-engineer-stub}}
[[Category:Hoover Dam]]