A Century in the Works

In November of 1891, at the age of twenty-five, John MacDonald Blackstock Hawley arrived in Fort Worth, Texas. A civil engineer from Minnesota, Hawley "hung out his shingle" in 1894 and began a tradition of engineering in Texas that his successors in the firm of Freese and Nichols have continued for one hundred years.

This history of Freese and Nichols focuses on the firm's contributions, design innovations, and "firsts" in water supply, water treatment, and wastewater engineering; transportation design for roads, bridges, and airports; city and regional planning; environmental science; and general civil and environmental engineering. A personal as well as professional account, A Century in the Works offers anecdotes about John Hawley's battle-ax punch and eccentric scientific experiments, Simon Freese's penchant for practical jokes, and Marvin Nichols's "water fights" and genealogical shakeups of his family tree.

The Freese and Nichols story will interest urban and environmental historians, professional engineers, and those working in related fields of hydraulic engineering, municipal and industrial water and sanitary systems, water quality, dam safety, waste management, transportation systems, and urban development.

The student of Texas history will find much of interest here as well. In many ways, the history of Freese and Nichols parallels that of the state for the past one hundred years.

The firm has had a pivotal role in developing Texas water resources since Hawley arrived in the state. And it will be the rare Texas reader who has never gone boating or picnicking at one of the over a hundred Texas lakes engineered by the firm in the intervening century.