John Frank Stevens: Panama Canal Mastermind and Pioneering Railroad Pathfinder

John Frank Stevens began his civil engineering career as a rodman on a survey crew in Maine in 1872. He soon moved to Minneapolis, where he apprenticed himself, eventually becoming Assistant City Engineer. In 1876 he began working for railroads in the western United States. In 1882 Stevens began working for a contractor laying tracks for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in Saskatchewan. The next spring he became assistant engineer of location for the Canadian Pacific, completing the first transcontinental line linking Montreal with Vancouver in 1888. In 1889 James Jerome Hill retained Stevens as chief pathfinder for the new Great Northern Railway between Minneapolis and Seattle. Shortly thereafter Stevens discovered the fabled Marias Pass. The following year he blazed a path across the Cascade Range that was named after him. This transcontinental line was completed in 1893, and Stevens became Chief Engineer of the Great Northern System. In 1903 he was named Vice President of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad in Chicago. In June 1905 Stevens was appointed Chief Engineer of the Panama Canal project. He reorganized the canal’s construction departments and spent millions on improving sanitation, which saved the project. In December 1905 Stevens began advocating for a locked canal with a massive earthen dam at Gatun. This plan was approved by Congress in June 1906 and eventually completed in 1914. In 1912 James Jerome Hill called upon Stevens to construct the Oregon Trunk Railway along the Deschutes River Gorge in Oregon. Following the collapse of Imperial Russia in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Stevens to chair a board of prominent railroad experts dispatched to Eastern Russia to offer advice on how the Trans-Siberian Railway could be salvaged and put back into operation. Stevens remained in the Far East until 1923. From 1925–29 Stevens served as a consultant on the 8-mile New Cascade Tunnel under Stevens Pass, and served as President of ASCE in 1927. He died in June 1943, at the age of 90.