"Father" of Portland Oregon's Water System
From 1885 to 1897 Smith was Chief Engineer for the City of Portland, Oregon, Water Works. In January, 1886, at the request of the Portland Water Committee, Isaac Smith led a survey to discover a new water source for Portland. He designed and supervised the building of the 24-mile (39 km) pipeline from the newly surveyed Bull Run Reservoir to Portland, from which the city still gets its drinking water. For several months the survey party fought through country described by another member of the survey team as "rugged wilderness, unsurveyed and unknown. The only trails are those of elk, deer, etc. There is not a trace of civilization in any direction."
"The Colonel", as he was called, was extremely dedicated to his work. He took to his bed on Christmas Day 1896 with pneumonia. Over the next three days he suffered bouts of chills and fever. His last words before death were, "How is the wingdam in the Sandy River getting along? I hope the cost of it will not exceed the estimate of $600. I would not like to have the cost exceed the estimate." Isaac Williams Smith never married and died of pneumonia in Portland on January 1, 1897.
His obituary in The Oregonian called this devotion to duty his "sterling and unapproachable integrity…his great but unostentatious love for all created things." It went on to state that Isaac Smith was "one of nature's noblemen, a man of lofty nature, who could not stoop to give place in his large and generous heart to anything that partook of the small and petty in act or sentiment. His life was colored strongly by his sense of duty, his sterling and unapproachable integrity…"
Smith is buried in a very plain grave in section three of River View Cemetery, in the Teal family plot.
Read more about this topic: Isaac W. Smith (surveyor)
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