Engineer Sites

In 1934, Coconino county used federal funds to help widen, surface and oil three miles of dirt road from the north end of Beaver Street in Flagstaff to the city's reservoirs.  This was the first county road to be paved.  It fostered bigger ideas from Flagstaff's city fathers, who had long wanted a more direct route to the Grand Canyon around the west side of the San Francisco Peaks. In 1936, county engineer Clyde Etter proposed improving the old forest road through Fort Valley and extending it 50 miles to the Williams-Grand Canyon road (today's Highway 64).  The Works Progress Administration (WPA) agreed to...

In 1938, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) decided to diverge the Long Prairie River to address issues that were both economic and community-driven. Long Prairie and Osakis are two small, rural, farming communities in Minnesota less than 30 minutes from one another. One community, Osakis, was supported through its tourist economy, while its sister community’s lifeblood was its farmers. A lake in and around the community of Osakis, Osakis Lake, and it was suffering to the point it was “nearly useless”, according to the newspapers written at the time (cited and pictured on this page). Lake Osakis was in desperate...

The two-story Art Deco design high school was approved for $195,000 in Works Progress Administration funds, and the city provided the remaining $130,000 to construct the school (Watson, nd). The building still serves the community as the Moss Point High School.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) undertook an extension of the water system in Oak Ridge, Louisiana during the Great Depression. Public utilities projects, including such water supply and purification systems, accounted for ten percent of all WPA spending during the period. The Oak Ridge water system project in the Morehouse parish employed 37 men.

The Public Works Administration (PWA) undertook a public utilities project in Rayne, Louisiana during the Great Depression. The cost of the project was $86,169.