page_title: Barton S. Alexander
section_title: California years
hierarchical_section_title: Barton S. Alexander / California years
context_page_description: Barton Stone Alexander was a Union Army lieutenant colonel, engineer regiment commander and chief engineer for the defenses of Washington during the American Civil War. In recognition of his service, in 1866, he was appointed to the brevet rank of brigadier general in the regular army, to rank from March 13, 1865. He was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served in the United States Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers, which at times was both a part of and separate from the United States Army Corps of Engineers. After graduating from West Point as a second lieutenant in the Class of 1842, he served in the Mexican–American War, building fortifications to protect American supply lines in the advance on Mexico City. After the end of the war, he was stationed in Washington, D.C., where he served as architect for the Scott Building and Quarters Buildings at the U.S. Soldiers' Home and took over the completion of the Smithsonian Institution Building after dissatisfaction with the pace of the first architect caused him to be dismissed.
context_section_description: On March 4, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Alexander for appointment to the grade of brevet brigadier general in the Regular Army, to rank from March 13, 1865, and the United States Senate confirmed the appointment on May 4, 1866. Following his closure of the offices of the defenses of Washington, D.C., he was briefly ordered to New England, where he supervised the renovation of various minor fortifications and river improvements in Maine. That posting came to an end on January 7, 1867, when he was ordered to the West Coast as the chief U.S. Army engineer in the region. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on March 7, 1867.
  As chief engineer to the Military Division of the Pacific, he was the top U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer on the entire American Pacific Coast. Upon his arrival on the West Coast, he visited locations from Alaska to the Mexican border in order to analyze the work that would be needed. Between 1868 and 1870, he surveyed numerous California harbors and made engineering suggestions as required. One of these suggestions resulted in the construction of a 7,000-foot breakwater that made Long Beach harbor accessible to large amounts of shipping for the first time. In 1870, he suggested that landowners near Colusa, California, construct levees to contain the Sacramento River within a single channel. The plan would reclaim swampland and control the river's annual floods, making large-scale farming possible. The plan was eagerly seized upon by local residents.
  In the spring of 1872, Col. Alexander and Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, commander of the Military Division of the Pacific, sailed from San Francisco, California, to Honolulu in the then-independent Kingdom of Hawaii on a secret mission to evaluate Hawaii's ports in terms of defensive capabilities and commercial facilities. Fellow civil war veteran Alfred S. Hartwell was their host, who was on the kingdom's supreme court at the time. They recognized the great potential of Pearl Harbor as a "harbor of refuge in time of war," and on May 8, 1873, recommended that the War Department acquire the harbor. Their suggestion resulted in the signing of the reciprocity Treaty of 1875 between the United States and Hawaii. As part of the treaty, Hawaii ceded the area of Pearl Harbor to the United States in return for trade agreements benefiting Hawaiian sugar planters. The treaty was signed on September 8, 1876, helping pave the way for eventual American annexation of the Kingdom.
caption: The irrigation and reclamation of the Central Valley of California was the focus of the Alexander Commission headed by Col. Alexander.
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