Arthur Powell Davis

Arthur Powell Davis was an American hydrographer, engineer and geographer who became one of the central figures in the development of large-scale water and hydroelectric infrastructure in the western United States. As director of the Reclamation Service, now the United States Bureau of Reclamation, from 1914 to 1923, he oversaw the agency responsible for major western dam and irrigation projects. Davis is credited with conceiving the plan for what became the Boulder Dam, later renamed Hoover Dam, as early as 1902, and he was appointed consulting engineer on the Hoover Dam project shortly before his death in 1933. The Davis Dam on the Colorado River was later named in his honor.