Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
Angeles Engineer District
After working at the Bureau for about three years, `36 to `39, I wanted to get back to
California. I knew some fellows who were in the same class as I was at Berkeley who had
gotten jobs with the Los Angeles District, so I wrote them a letter. They said, "Jimmy
Jobes is Chief of the Hydraulics Branch here, and he runs the lab also, plus the hydraulic
design work. Write him a letter.
So I wrote him a letter, and in a short time he replied, "We've got a job in the Hydraulic
Design Section paying
Well, that's 0.00 more than the Bureau was going
to pay me.
It wasn't very long before the word got around that I was leaving the Bureau to work for
the Corps, and Debler, Chief of the Project Investigations Branch, asked me to come and
see him. He said, "I hear you're going back to the Corps of Engineers." "Yes, to the
Los Angeles District office. I want to get back to California, and they're paying me
2,300. That's more than you folks pay here." He said, "I'm going to tell you one thing.
The Corps of Engineers is not a good outfit to work for. They're just crummy. I've got
a place for you to work up in Boise, Idaho, where we've got a field office, and I'll pay
you 2,300 if you'll go up there."
I said, "Well, no, I appreciate all your kindness, but I want to go back to California. All
my family's there. So I did. That's how I got back to California.
Wolf Creek Dam, Nashville Engineer District
I've got some information here that says you went to Nashville District first, in 1939.
A:
Well, I went to Los Angeles District, but I was there only a short time when I was sent
to the Nashville District. TVA was trying to get money to design and construct the Wolf
Creek Dam in Tennessee. The Corps of Engineers thought that its Nashville District
should do it.
It got to be quite a hot political item. Roosevelt was president then, and it was all laid out
before him. He said, "The Corps of Engineers should do it. It was known that there
was something he didn't like about the TVA. The TVA said, "The Nashville District
doesn't have any experience designing dams. We do.
Roosevelt asked the Corps representative, probably the Chief of Engineers, what he could
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