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David E. Hughes papers
WRCA 083
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Title: David E. Hughes papers
Date (inclusive): 1856-1942
Date (bulk): 1920-1935
Collection Number: WRCA 083
Creator:
Hughes, David E., 1861-1942
Extent:
1.67 linear feet
(4 boxes)
Repository:
Rivera Library. Special Collections Department.
Riverside, CA 92517-5900
Abstract: The collection consists of correspondence and reports pertaining to Los Angeles Harbor, San Pedro Harbor, Long Beach Harbor,
Los Angeles River, Newport Bay, San Diego Harbor, Santa Monica breakwater, and the Point Fermin landslide (1929). Also included
are materials on tides and boundaries.
Languages: The collection is in English.
The collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to the University of California, Riverside Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives.
Distribution or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission
of the copyright owners. To the extent other restrictions apply, permission for distribution or reproduction from the applicable
rights holder is also required. Responsibility for obtaining permissions, and for any use rests exclusively with the user.
[identification of item], [date if possible]. David E. Hughes papers (WRCA 083). Water Resources Collections and Archives.
Special Collections & University Archives, University of California, Riverside.
The collection was given to the Water Resources Collections and Archives in March 1977 by Richard O. Eaton, of Sun City, Arizona.
Mr. Eaton worked with Hughes at the office of the Los Angeles District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Processed by Water Resources Collections and Archives staff, 1999.
Collection number updated February 2019. Legacy collection number was MS 77/1. This change was part of a project in 2018/2019
to update the collection numbers for collections in the Water Resources Collections and Archives.
David Edward Hughes was born on September 21, 1861 at Palmyra, Ohio, the son of Evan and Ann Johns Hughes. His youth was spent
in that locality attending school, farming for his widowed mother, and working in sandstone quarries. At the age of sixteen
he moved to Dunigan in Northern California.
He was largely self-educated, devoting every spare moment to study in both medicine and engineering. He taught in country
schools and at Pierce College, College City, California, and, although still in his early twenties, became a professor of
mathematics. Hughes was one of the finest applied mathematicians of his generation. He evolved, calculated, and published
a table on the perfect transition ("Sickle") curve, or American spiral, which was used on the construction of the Chicago
elevated railroad, as well as on other projects.
In 1893, he accepted employment with the U.S. Engineer Department, remaining with that service until his retirement in 1932.
His first work for the War Department was on the improvement of Humboldt Bay, California, stabilizing the entrance by jetty
construction. In 1902 he was transferred to the newly created Los Angeles Engineer District and, for the following thirty
years, was its ranking civilian engineer. He built jetties and fortifications at San Diego, Calif., and breakwaters and fortifications
for Los Angeles-Long Beach Harbor. For a year he served as engineer for a board appointed by President Taft to determine the
site and the design for San Carlos Dam, later Coolidge Dam, in Arizona. His was the guiding hand in the establishment of federal
harbor lines along the Southern California coast. These lines determined the development of the harbors.
Hughes investigated tideland law and ownership and became an authority on the subject. Typically, he urged and aided in the
litigation that restored the local tidelands to the people and resulted in municipally owned harbors. He experimented and
wrote on
surge and
seiche. He evolved the idea of substitution of waste dredging for the costly stone in the strengthening of breakwaters, and the vast
chain at San Pedro, or Los Angeles, Harbor, built from this design is a monument to him.
Hughes was married to Lydia Wiklund in 1913 at Florence, Arizona. He was elected a member of the American Society of Civil
Engineers on September 6, 1905. He died on November 19, 1942.
Excerpted from:
Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, v. 109 (1944), p. 1495-1497.
The collection consists of correspondence and reports pertaining to Los Angeles Harbor, San Pedro Harbor, Long Beach Harbor,
Los Angeles River, Newport Bay, San Diego Harbor, Santa Monica breakwater, and the Point Fermin landslide (1929). Also included
are materials on tides and boundaries.
The collection is arranged topically into 8 series.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
library's online public access catalog.
United States. Army. Corps of Engineers. Los Angeles District
Long Beach Harbor (Calif.)
Los Angeles Harbor (Calif.)
Los Angeles River (Calif.)
Newport Bay (Calif.)
San Diego Bay (Calif.)
Shore protection -- California
Submerged lands -- Law and legislation -- California
Tide-waters -- Law and legislation -- California
Tide-waters -- Law and legislation -- United States
Correspondence
Reports