The two Samuel’s – Hill and Lancaster – get all of the attention for the building of the Columbia River highway in the Gorge where the mighty river bores through the Cascades Range. The highway project proposed by Sam Hill included a highway from Portland downriver to the ocean at Astoria. Enter Henry Lee Bowlby.

EARLY DAYS

Son of a newspaper owner in the small town of Crete, Nebraska – ten miles southwest from Lincoln, Henry was born in 1879.  He attended the local high school graduating at 15.  Spending the next couple years at the Nebraska State University in nearby Lincoln. 

All male students attended classes in military science, one of the federal mandates for colleges derived from the land-grant program signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862.  With the Civil War, there were times when large number of officers could be needed on short notice.  Graduates of land-grant schools with their basic training could fill the bill in a 19^th century war.

Almost into his junior year, Henry Bowlby gained appointment to “special work” under the command of Lieutenant John Stotsenburg.  Stotsenburg had come to Nebraska on the teaching assignment from the US Sixth Cavalry Regiment of the regular army.  A West Point graduate of 1877 (the same class including H. Ossian Flipper, the first black graduate of the Point), he would go on to command the Nebraska volunteer regiment called up for the Spanish American War.  Promoted to major of the volunteers, Stotsenburg gathered up his regiment and took it off to the Philippines whereas a colonel, he would die in action during the succeeding Filipino American War the following spring.  Bowlby’s brother Charles served as a soldier in the First Nebraska.

WEST POINT APPOINTMENT

Bowlby had his eyes set on an appointment to West Point in the meantime.  Before the call up for volunteers to muster in came, Bowlby’s parents sent him off to Highland Falls, New York where former lieutenant Charles Braden ran the National Preparatory School.  Braden’s school helped prepare young men to face exams to gain admittance to West Point and prepare them for what lie ahead at the academy.

Braden ran the prep school following wounds he received on the Yellowstone River in 1873 fighting under Custer in the US Seventh Cavalry Regiment.  His regimen worked for Bowlby as Henry gained acceptance in the summer of 1898 as a member of the Class of 1902.

WEST POINT PROBLEM

It gets a little more interesting after that.  Henry Bowlby was one of five young men in their third year at the academy who were dismissed.  In an interview with Fred Lockey of the Oregon Journal in 1914, Bowlby claimed his dismissal was the result of a biscuit throwing incident in the mess hall.  The cadet in charge of the table refused revealing those involved receiving six months punishment tour – marching with rifle during all of his recreation time.  That cadet was popular in the class.  The rest of his classmates decided to demonstrate against the decision announced at a subsequent dinner in the mess hall. 

Bowlby says he was guilty of only “showing sympathy”. However, the superintendent of the Academy, Colonel Albert L. Mills – a hero from the recently concluded Spanish American conflict, found Bowlby to be one of five “ringleaders”.  The leaders had planned the demonstration in the mess hall.  They then led other cadets from the barracks where they led cheers for the punished student to the home of the Superintendent. There, profanities were offered up to Colonel Miles and the reveille gun was brought over to face the Superintendent’s house.

Bowlby’s class was already showing signs of lack of discipline before the biscuit incident.  A serious case of hazing had occurred in 1899 with a general crackdown on the infamous cadet practice.   In addition to the five dismissed cadets – all from Bowlby’s class, six others faced suspension for six months.  The original cadet who refused to give up names marched his punishment tours.

Interestingly, of the suspended cadets, the four who graduated, all went on to become lieutenant or full colonels after long careers in the army.  The original cadet punished for not giving up the biscuit thrower, Robert R. Ralston, went on to serve for thirty-two years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.  He lies buried at Arlington.

ONWARD FROM ADVERSITY

The five young men dismissed decided not to fight their punishment.  Instead, they signed up becoming assistant engineers on a rail project being built between Quito and Guayaquil in Ecuador.  They worked there for three years before returning to the United States.  Upon their return, President Theodore Roosevelt offered the five the chance at a commission, but they all turned it down.

Bowlby went back to Nebraska where he finished a bachelor’s degree at the University of Nebraska as well as a degree in civil engineering.  Upon graduation, he came west to Seattle to become an instructor in the civil engineering department at the University of Washington. 

While at the UW, he worked under Samuel Lancaster, professor at the university’s new highway engineering department. From Lancaster, a friendship with Samuel Hill grew, as well.

On a sidenote – Henry Bowlby was known in the Northwest as “Major Bowlby”.  While he did not accept a commission upon his return to the US from Ecuador. He was commissioned in the Nebraska National Guard soon after graduating as a captain.  It is within the Nebraska Guard where he might have obtained the rank of major.

WASHINGTON BOUND

From the UW, Bowlby gained appointment in April 1909 as chief highway engineer for Washington state and a few months later, the second Highway Commissioner.  He served his term until 1911 when he was let go by Governor Marion Hay.  Bowlby had been using convict labor – a favorite theme of another friend, Samuel Hill – on several projects around the state running afoul of labor interests and living conditions inside convict labor camps.

He spent the next two years in private practice as a highway engineer consultant.  In 1912, Henry Bowlby was selected to be the executive officer of the Pacific Highway association – the Pacific Highway eventually becoming US highway 99 and later, Interstate 5.  The association was another of Sam Hill’s several “Good Roads” themes.  A year later, he followed Hill south to Oregon becoming named the first highway commissioner there, selected by Governor Oswald West.

A NEW STATE

Bowlby tried to standardize highway construction in both states.  Before the creation of a highway commission, each county or city was on its own regarding road or bridge construction.  Local governments were at the mercy of construction firms since they seldom had the expertise needed to evaluate costs or plans.

As Oregon highway commissioner, Bowlby defined roles forcing contractors to live up to the terms they set in their contracts regarding both cost estimates and work completion.  This would quickly lead to problems.

During his time as commissioner, many projects began with Bowlby overseeing on the ground and from Salem.  A major problem for him as a state official was funding.  The main source of funding for road projects came in at a county level.  Bowlby was not very savvy politically.  He oversaw both the upper and lower Columbia River highway projects.  Multnomah and Clatsop counties were no problem, but Hood River, Wasco and Columbia counties were.  It did not help matters in Columbia County when Bowlby announced “every automobile owner in Portland” being interested in modifying the Columbia County route to make it easier for them to get on down the road.  He had quite a few difficulties with politicians in Columbia County who did not want to see the new project to bypass their constituents.

OLD PROBLEMS IN A NEW STATE

Though Bowlby is most known today for overseeing the Columbia River highway projects – both “completed” partially in 1915. He also involved himself in other projects around the state. Example, Jackson County in the south – where the Pacific Highway was beginning to take shape.  Contractors in Columbia, Jackson and Hood River counties all demanded tens of thousands more than their contracts provided for.  When Bowlby balked at their demands, he and the state became swamped in litigation.

A big problem in Columbia County was routing of the highway.  Local officials wanted all of the main towns in the county to be connected with the new road.  Problems with county funding also led local leaders to call for use of pre-existing roads to be used.  A large problem with was additional miles to the route. Towns like Mayger were far off the main path as well as the main town of St Helens. Plus, the addition of many more rail crossings.  People in St Helens countered they paid a third of the funding from Columbia County. With the route passing several miles to the west, no return was given.  To fund a road for the benefit of Portland was not something they could stomach.

NEW GOVERNOR

With a new governor – James Withycombe – in 1915, Bowlby’s critics had a new ear.  Supposedly, Withycombe had promised one of his first acts was to bounce Bowlby in favor of the road contractors.  The office of a separate State Highway Engineer was changed to become a subordinate to the State Engineer.  Soon after, the Oregon Highway Commission asked for Bowlby’s resignation.

Bowlby and some of the state newspapers thought the move scandalous.  Bowlby said, “The truth is that the governor made promises, probably indirectly, to bridge and steel men before the election that he would oust me as soon as he got into office.”  He still oversaw construction of much of the Columbia River highway – from Astoria to Cascade Locks – before moving on.

AFTER OREGON

After resigning from his state position in Oregon, Henry Bowlby became one of the governors of the national American Road Builders Association in 1916.  A year later saw him as a senior road engineer in the US Department of Agriculture. 

WWI saw him return to the army initially as am adjutant of the 20^th Engineering Regiment.  In the history of the 20^th Engineers, he is mentioned curiously as a “graduate” of West Point. Obviously, it was harder to check out information given in the pre-internet era.  The 20^th Engineers were known as the Forestry Regiment including many men from the Northwest.  Several men of the regiment were lost from a torpedo incident off the coast of Islay in Scotland in early 1918.

During the war, Bowlby organized a regimental band. He later served as a bridge engineer mustering out as a lieutenant colonel of the National Army. 

In 1919, he became chief of the War Materials Division of the US Bureau of Public Roads. Two years later, he became chairman of the ARBA.  Robert Moses tabbed him, in 1923, to become chief engineer for the Long Island Park Commission and the Taconic Parkway Commission. 

Later on, he became an executive vice president with the engineering firm of Graham, Crowley and Associates in Chicago.  Henry Bowlby died in November 1948 at the age of 69. He lies at rest in Arlington National Cemetery with his wife Ivy.

Henry Lee Bowlby is not as well remembered for his contributions to the nascent Oregon highway system. For the time being, you can read his first annual report on work projected and completed in his first year as commissioner here. He was probably a good engineer, but he ran afoul of politicians in both Washington and Oregon eventually. Maybe his time at West Point was a harbinger of things to come.