Frank A. Kittredge
Robert W. Hadlow, Columbia River Highway Historic District, National Historic Landmark Nomination
[Sam] Hill proclaimed his gospel to more influential groups, including the University of Washington Board of Regents. In 1907, he convinced its members to establish a highway engineering curriculum at the University with [Samuel C.] Lancaster as its chair. The position was the first of its type in the country, and interestingly, Lancaster was one of three faculty members without any collegiate credentials, and a full professor at that! Hill’s dream of creating a large supply of highway engineers to improve Washington’s road system seemed fulfilled as nearly two hundred students enrolled in Lancaster’s first class. They included Frank A. Kittredge and John A. Elliott. Both men studied under Lancaster and within a decade had made their mark on Pacific Northwest roads. In 1909-10, Kittredge located and oversaw construction of portions of what eventually became Washington State Route 8, along the north shore of the Columbia River, near Lyle, in Skamania County. In 1913-14, he located the Pacific Highway in Jackson County, Oregon, near the California State line. Elliott surveyed a route for the CRH in Hood River County and designed the Mitchell Point Tunnel.15
Kittredge later became one of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads’ (BPR) best locating engineers, gaining much experience in laying out park roads. By the mid-1920s, he established the alignment for what became Logan Pass on the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park and believed that it would “exhibit the grandeur of the park to the maximum.” The National Park Service thought highly of Kittredge and in 1927 promoted him to chief engineer.
Meanwhile, Elliott, then an engineer with the BPR, helped draw up a long-term agreement between his agency and the NPS in 1925 to cooperate on park road design and construction. He eventually became the ranking engineer for Region 6 of the BPR (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas).16
Hadlow, Landmark Nomination, 50