Research

Administrative History

The series is the result of the initiative of L.C. Hulburd, Western Division Engineer, as explained in the annual report of State Engineer and Surveyor Frank M. Williams for 1920. Records relating to improvements to the state's infrastructure were often the product of joint action of the office of the State Engineer and Surveyor and the Department of Public Works.

According to the annual report, they were done under specific legislative authority of "sporadic and unrelated statutes." At the time of this report the State Engineer was recommending that legislation for special improvements be "systematized." In the Western Division, Mr. Hulburd moved to organize the records filed there, specifically by assembling and classifying data and related records through a review of the hydrography of the western part of the state. The report also remarks on the "often conflicting requirements of navigation, sanitation, power-development and flood control" that are reflected in the records. Work was carried out without special funds in a "more or less desultory manner" with an eye toward use in "systematic, up-to-date, regional planning."