"The throwing of a biscuit in the mess hall at the West Point academy was a determining factor more or less in the career of Major H.L. Bowlby," wrote Fred Lockley in an Oregon Journal feature article introducing Oregon's first state highway engineer. The comment referred to an incident that occurred in 1901 during Henry Bowlby's senior year at the military academy. The biscuit-tossing infuriated West Point officials who severely disciplined the cadet officer in charge of the table. Fellow cadets demonstrated on his behalf. As a result, the five ringleaders, Bowlby among them, were expelled. President Theodore Roosevelt intervened to offer the five their commissions in the army, but they declined. Bowlby was not graduated from West Point and wasn't commissioned until the advent of the First World War, rising to the rank of major in 1917. Why he claimed that title during the years employed as State Highway Engineer in Washington and in Oregon is a mystery.
Born in Crete, Nebraska in 1879, he worked as a boy at his father's newspaper, The Crete Democrat. After having graduated from University of Nebraska with a degree in engineering in 1905, Bowlby moved to Seattle, teaching the same at the University of Washington until 1909. He became chief engineer of the Washington State Highway Department in 1907, a position he held for four years. When Bowlby became Oregon's first State Highway Engineer in 1913, he stepped into a position with clearly delineated duties, serving a newly-created commission charged with establishing new statewide building standards. Contractors used to having their own way could not fool or bully Bowlby who insisted upon sticking to contracts and holding bidders to estimates for work. When frustrations erupted, contractors turned to the politicians with axes to grind and cut a deal, undercutting Bowlby's authority and resulting in his expulsion in 1915.
An independent engineer, after an investigation, is in approximate agreement with Major Bowlby and his district engineers as to the balance due contractors on the road work in Clatsop County.
This engineer was sent out by engineer [E.I.] Cantine of the state highway department [Bowlby's successor]. He commends the location of the Clatsop County highway, commends the road work and in effect commends the Bowlby administration in Clatsop County. The findings of this engineer are approved by Mr. Cantine.
Thus the truth about the roadwork in Clatsop and Columbia Counties is gradually coming to the surface. The claim of Clatsop County contractors is for $73,221. The balance held by Bowlby and his engineers to be due to contractors is about $15,000. Through the findings of the independent engineer vindicate the Bowlby findings, Major Bowlby was removed from office because he guarded the public road fund, insisted that the specifications should be adhered to, and refused to pay the contractors the $73,221 they demanded in Clatsop County.
The findings of the independent engineer illuminate many things. They explain why the contractors held meetings in Senator Day's office in Portland to agree on a candidate for governor during the primaries.
They explain why Senator Day had the office of State Highway Engineer so changes that Bowlby would be ousted and another engineer appointed, a plan which failed, both by bungling the bill and in the selection of the new man.
They explain why Day's committee held a hearing at which charges were made against Bowlby by the contractors and their lawyers, but refused to grant a replay hearing for Bowlby.
They explain why Major Bowlby was asked by the governor and Treasurer Kay to resign with the explanation that Bowlby's presence in the office prevented the legislature from making generous road appropriations, an explanation that was not an explanation because after Bowlby's dismissal the legislature did not increase the road appropriation. They explain why the Hood River contractor wrote a Grants Pass friend saying of Bowlby: "There is a general revolt among the contractors engaged in this work, but we have the skid under him."
All the charges, all the shrieks, all the newspaper work, all of Day's road activities at the legislature, all the attacks in the state house against Bowlby were parts in the deliberate and comprehensive plan of Day to dislodge Bowlby and so arrange things that the contractors could get, not what the specifications called for, but great sums of money claimed outside the specifications.
It was all a colossal game, worked in many directions but with all the schemes coordinated, a game with the public road fund as the object and the ousting of Bowlby as a means of reaching that fund in the process.
It was one of the boldest and most audacious political schemes ever attempted in Oregon, and in the light of the fact that Major Bowlby was dismissed from office for refusing to give the contractors what they asked, it constitutes one of the greatest scandals in the political history of Oregon.
Bowlby went on to serve on the American Road Builders Association Board of Governors in 1916, and as a senior highway engineer for the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 1917. He entered the army in September of that year, serving as a bridge engineer in France and mustering out in 1918 as a lieutenant colonel. Following his two years of service in the Army, Bowlby became Chief, War Materials Division, U. S. Bureau of Public Roads and, in 1922, ARBA Chairman. In 1923 he was appointed to the position of Chief Engineer of the Long Island Park Commission and the Taconic Parkway Commission and served under Robert Moses. Moses accepted him on the strength of his work on the Columbia River Highway.
Bowlby's later years were spent in private practice as Executive Vice President of Graham, Crowley & Associates of Chicago. He passed away in November of 1948 at the age of 69, nine months after the death of his wife Ivy, to whom he had been married since 1907.
Among the many fraternal organizations to which Bowlby held a lifetime membership was Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and he lived by its creed: "The true gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies ... who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe."