John Frank Stevens
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John F. Stevens (25 April 1853–2 June 1943) built the Great Northern Railroad in the United States and was chief engineer on the Panama Canal.
Stevens was born in rural Maine and had little formal education. He learned surveying and went west as a young man, where he worked as a junior engineer surveying and building railroads. By the age of 33, in 1886, Stevens was principal assistant engineer for the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway, and in charge of building the line from Duluth, Minnesota to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
In 1889, Stevens was hired by James J. Hill as a locating engineer for the Great Northern Railroad. He discovered the Marias Pass over the Continental Divide and Stevens Pass in the Cascade Range. Hill promoted him to chief engineer in 1895, and later to general manager. During his time at the Great Northern, Stevens built over a thousand miles of railroad, including the original Cascade Tunnel.
Stevens left the Great Northern in 1903 for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad, where he was promoted to vice-president. Then, in 1905, at Hill's recommendation, he was hired by Theodore Roosevelt as chief engineer on the Panama Canal.
Stevens' primary achievement in Panama was in building the infrastructure necessary to complete the canal. He rebuilt the Panama Railway and devised a system for disposing of spoil from the excavations by rail. He also built proper housing for canal workers and oversaw extensive sanitation and mosquito-control programs that eliminated yellow fever and other diseases from the Isthmus.
Stevens resigned from the Canal project in 1907, as the focus of the work turned to construction of the canal itself. As a railroad engineer, Stevens had little expertise in building locks and dams, and probably realized he was no longer the best person for the job.
Among his subsequent engineering projects, Stevens spent five years (beginning in 1917) in Russia reorganizing the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Stevens died at the age of 90 in 1943, in Pinehurst, North Carolina.