Walter W. Crosby Papers

The collection contains materials from Walter W. Crosby documenting his career as a highway engineer and early 20th century proponent of roads and bridges designed for automobiles rather than horse-drawn vehicles.

Walter Wilson Crosby was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1872. He attended the public schools in Bangor, Maine and graduated in 1893 from Maine State College (now the University of Maine at Orono) with a degree in civil engineering. He received an advanced degree from the University of Maryland in 1912 and held a Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Maine. Although his specialty in college had been highway engineering, after graduation he first worked as assistant engineer of maintenance and reconstruction on the Portland and Rumford Falls Railway. He then worked for the Hancock Construction Company in Boston before accepting a position in 1897 as a resident engineer with the Massachusetts Highway Commission. He then moved to Maryland and worked as roads engineer for Baltimore County and later general superintendent to the Board of Park Commissioners of the city of Baltimore. Upon the passage of a law in 1904 providing for state aid for highway improvement, Crosby became Chief Engineer to the Maryland Geological and Economic Survey and later chief engineer to the Maryland State Road Commission. As such he became a strong proponent of building good roads for the emerging automobile traffic, both by improving the condition of local roads and by replacing wooden bridges with concrete structures. He introduced and developed modern methods of highway construction and maintenance in the state of Maryland and wrote extensively for publications such as Good Roads, as well as for proceedings of various professional engineering societies. In 1928 he was co-author with George E. Goodwin of "Highway Location and Engineering." He also contributed sections to the "American Highway Engineers Handbook" and was the author of "Some Western Fishing," published in 1926.

Crosby was an Army officer in World War I, serving as a lieutenant colonel in the 104th Engineers, American Expeditionary Force in 1917-1919. In 1922 he entered the National Park Service and was superintendent at Grand Canyon National Park. He then served from 1928 to 1945 as a member of the city planning commission of Coronado, California. He died in California in 1946.