page_title: Reginald H. Thomson
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Reginald H. Thomson / Later life
caption_attribution_description: emerald
context_page_description: Reginald Heber Thomson was a self-taught American civil engineer. He worked in Washington state, mainly in Seattle, where he became city engineer in 1892 and held the position for two decades. Alan J. Stein wrote that Thomson "probably did more than any other individual to change the face of Seattle" and was responsible for "virtually all of Seattle's infrastructure".
  Despite the scope of his work, no major portion of Seattle's infrastructure has ever carried Thomson's name. He was supposed to have been memorialized by the R.H. Thomson Expressway, proposed in 1960 but never built.
  Among his achievements were the railway route through Snoqualmie Pass, the Lake Washington Ship Canal, much of the paving of Seattle's roads and sidewalks, numerous bridges over rivers and valleys, and major improvements to Seattle's sewer system, as well as straightening and deepening the Duwamish River and developing the Cedar River watershed, now one of Seattle's major sources of drinking water. He was also responsible for much of the regrading of Seattle, taking down hills and filling in the mudflats, and played a major role in the creation of Seattle City Light, the Port of Seattle, and the Hiram M.
context_section_description: Overlapping his tenure as city engineer, Thomson was president of the University of Washington board of managers (1905–1915). He also became increasingly interested in Seattle's waterways, which led him to resign as city engineer in 1911 to lobby the state legislature and otherwise help organize the Port of Seattle, for which he became chief engineer. Among his achievements for the port were the acquisition of Smith Cove and the land at the foot of Bell Street which is now home to the Port's headquarters. He was also largely responsible for dredging and straightening the Duwamish River delta, and for obtaining federal money for the Ballard Locks, now the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks.
  From 1916 to 1922, Thomson served on the Seattle city council, while continuing to work as a civil engineer. After leaving the council, he continued working various places in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. He consulted on Oregon's Rogue River Valley Irrigation Canal; built hydroelectric plants in Eugene, Oregon and surveyed plant sites in Southeastern Alaska; planned the water supply of Bellingham, Washington and consulted on the system for Wenatchee; briefly, in his seventies, he returned, temporarily, as Seattle city engineer in 1930 to finish the Diablo Dam on the Skagit River after the death of city engineer William D. Barkhuff; consulted to the Inter-County River Improvement Commission for King and Pierce Counties (the counties containing Seattle and Tacoma, respectively), and consulted on the construction of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge (now Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge, carrying Interstate 90 across Lake Washington) and for the foundations of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
  At the end of his life, Thomson wrote an autobiography, That Man Thomson, which was published posthumously.
caption: Diablo Dam, pictured here in 2010.
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