BANKS F.A.

BANKS F.A. 04.12. 1883 Saco ME/USA 14.12. 1957 Pasadena CA/USA Frank Arthur Banks graduated as a civil engineer from University of Maine. He went West in 1906 to join the US Reclamation Service, currently the US Bureau of Reclamation USBR. He rose from rodman to construction engineer and district manager of construction and development of the Great Columbia Basin Project. His work in this capacity culminated in the design of Grand Coulee Dam. The Columbia River winds almost 2,000 km from the mountains of British Columbia to the Pacific. As construction and supervising engineer and project manager for USBR from 1933 to 1950, Banks was in charge of the construction of four large earth dams and all irrigation facilities built during the period, in addition to Grand Coulee Dam. Banks was a consulting engineer after retirement in 1950 to the Province of British Columbia for Kenny Dam, and to the Government of India on the construction of Bhakra Dam. He received many honors, including the Distinguished Service Award, highest honor of the US Department of the Interior. The citation states that ‘his work across the valley of the Columbia will aid the nation as long as water runs downhill’. Banks was a gentle, soft-spoken, white-haired, erudite man who spoke with the trace of a Down East accent which he brought West from Maine. The dams which Banks built in the Great Basin supply water to some 1 million acres. The 30,000 farms for which the dams erected provide water, cover an area of more than 3,000 square miles. In the 1950s, the Grand Coulee Dam was the largest power producing unit of the world. As a scenic attraction its water fall is more than twice the height of Niagara Falls. The Banks Lake is a 40 km long reservoir in central Washington USA, named after Frank Banks. Anonymous (1939). Frank A. Banks succeeds the late J.D. Ross. Power Plant Engineering 43(6): 414. P Anonymous (1939). Banks to be chief at Bonneville. Engineering News-Record 122(May 4): 635. P Anonymous (1950). Frank Arthur Banks. Reclamation Era 36(7): 130-132. P Anonymous (1958). ASCE Honorary Member F.A. Banks dies. Civil Engineering 28(2): 131. Banks, F.A. (1934). Columbia Basin Project is described by construction engineer. Southwest Builder and Contractor 85(Nov.23): 8-9. McDonald, J.C., Banks, F.A. (1934). Developing the Columbia River Drainage Basin. Civil Engineering 4(9): 443-459.