John F. Stevens - Boston, MA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

“There are three diseases in Panama: yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet; and the greatest of these is cold feet.”
- John F. Stevens

John Frank Stevens was born, grew up and went to school in Maine. Not finding many prospects for employment in Maine, Stevens went west and landed a surveying job with the city of Minneapolis. As with most engineers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, John Stevens was largely self-taught. He parlayed his surveying experience into jobs with the railroads, mainly as a locating and construction engineer.

The last several decades of the nineteenth century saw rapid expansion of the railroads in the western United States. Throughout the 1890s, John F. Stevens worked as a locating engineer for the Great Northern Railway as it tracked westward through Montana, over the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades to the Pacific. His skills as an innovative engineer, ability to work with contractors under the harshest of conditions and success as an efficient administrator propelled him to the position of chief engineer for the railroad. The Great Northern has often been cited as the best engineered railroad in America at that time.

In 1905, John F. Wallace, chief engineer of the Panama Canal project resigned citing deplorable conditions and rampant disease. President Theodore Roosevelt who considered the whole project to be in a devil of a mess, appointed John F. Stevens, who came highly recommended, to replace Wallace. Stevens found conditions to be worse than Roosevelt had thought but realized that the problem was one of infrastructure and immediately stopped all excavation work in lieu of building housing, warehouses, shops and reworking the Panama Railway to better handle the removal of material.

Though initially skeptical of the mosquito theory of malaria transmission, John F. Stevens nevertheless allowed Colonel William Gorgas, chief sanitary engineer, to pursue his mosquito eradication project. This proved immensely successful to the completion of the Panama Canal. Stevens also lobbied for the lock and dam canal system as opposed to a sea-level canal, which also proved instrumental to the canal’s overall success.

John F. Stevens was a hands-on engineer who lived close to the laborers near the worksite. He was also rarely seen without a cigar which earned him the nickname ‘Big Smoke.’ With all the proper infrastructure in place and the ‘dirt flying,’ Stevens abruptly resigned claiming that there was nothing left to do but the digging. His replacement, General George Goethals, who saw the project through to completion, always acknowledged Stevens’ role claiming “Mr. Stevens has perfected such an organization ... that there is nothing left for us to do but just have the organization continue in the good work it has done and is doing…”

After his work on the Panama Canal, John F. Stevens returned to railroading both in the United States and abroad. He retired in 1923. Stevens Pass through the Cascades in Washington state, where the Great Northern Railway crosses the mountains, is named for him. He also appeared on a Canal Zone postage stamp.
(Sources: wikipedia.com, publicworks.com, czbrats.com)

Description: John F. Stevens is laid to rest in Mt. Hope Cemetery in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston. Date of birth: 04/25/1853 Date of death: 06/02/1943 Area of notoriety: Other Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: none Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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