Los Angeles County CA Archives Biographies.....Clark, Walter Gordon October 10, 1876 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/cafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com October 31, 2010, 6:18 pm Source: California and Californians, Vol. IV, Published 1932, Pages 103 - 105 Author: The Lewis Publishing Company WALTER GORDON CLARK, consulting engineer at Los Angeles, is one of the eminent men of his profession in America. His experience has covered a broad field not only in the West, but in some of America's outlying possessions and in foreign lands. His father before him was a pioneer in the development of the rich mineral resources of the western states and territories, and the record of the family as a whole is an interesting exhibit of the pioneer. The family name was acquired through the familiar process in old England and other European countries of an office or occupation supplying a cognomen which by use and adoption became the family name. One of Mr. Clark's old English ancestors was granted permission to establish in England a Reformed Church of Martin Luther. He became clerk of the church. He was known as "The Clerk," a name usually pronounced Clark, and later the name was spelled to fit the pronunciation. The first of the family to come to America was John Clark, who became a resident of Jamestown, Virginia, soon after that colony was established. He made four trips between Jamestown and England, and on his fourth trip his ship was wrecked on the Irish Coast. He returned to America as first mate of the Mayflower, which landed the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in 1620. The Virginia branch of the Clark family has supplied some famous names in American history, including George Rogers Clark and Gen. William Clark, who was second in command in the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-06 for the exploration of Upper Louisiana. Walter Gordon Clark's grandfather was a relative of Gen. William Clark, from whom he received a book of the original notes of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Walter G. Clark by inheritance possesses today some sixty pages of this original manuscript, which was one of the important sources for the detailed study of the expedition sent out by President Jefferson. Mr. Clark's great-great-grandfather was Abra Clark, to whom George Washington deeded the land that today is included in the site of Clarksburg, West Virginia, in payment for services rendered as a civil engineer. Thus engineering has been a family profession for several generations. The grandfather of Walter Gordon Clark was Joseph Clark, who was a soldier in the War of 1812. He fought under General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans. At New Orleans he fell in love with a French girl, Tempathy Chambliss. Miss Chambliss, after completing her education in France, returned in 1821 and was married to Joseph Clark. The father of Walter Gordon Clark was Thomas A. Clark. He was born in Virginia and three years later the family moved to Tennessee, where he grew up. He became a mining engineer and lived a life of many adventures as well as important achievements in the West. When a boy he sought to satisfy his adventurous disposition by going to Westport, now Kansas City, to join Captain Fremont's command. He was rejected because of his youth. He refused to be daunted, and a little later had the good fortune to be accepted as one of the followers of the famous scout, Jim Bridger. He made his first scouting trip from Westport to the Columbia River under Bridger. A little later Captain Fremont took him into his service, and for fourteen years he was in the West, fighting Indians, exploring and scouting. While in Southern Utah he and other scouts were called upon to rescue a wagon train that had been surrounded by Indians. When they arrived they found the wagons of the train formed in a hollow circle, with one wagon somewhat separated from the rest. Thomas A. Clark took his position under the box of this isolated wagon, which he thought unoccupied. When the Indians withdrew in the morning, there stepped from the wagon bed two young girls who had spent the night there. One of them was Eunice M. Wright, then eleven years of age. Thomas A. Clark escorted these girls back to the fortified circle, and years later Eunice Wright became his wife. Thomas A. Clark was engaged in the pioneer development work in the famous Alder Gulch mining district in Western Montana. He took part in the development of mining properties in Gallatin Valley, that state, and developed the placer ground in Bingham County, Utah, from which he took out $450,000. He was one of the original locaters of properties that are now so profitably operated by the Utah Copper Company. In Montana he was also connected with the development of the Confederate Gulch properties. In the Gallatin Valley a ditch which he and his associates put in for mining purposes is today used as an irrigation ditch. Thomas A. Clark was also with the noted Kit Carson in some of the southwestern campaigns. He was stationed at Fort Tucson while pursuing Indians through New Mexico and Arizona. He was interested in mining properties at Pioche, Nevada. As a miner, Indian scout and frontiersman he became a friend and associate of such famous literary characters as Mark Twain, Robert G. Ingersoll and General Lew Wallace. His friends were legion, and while he outlived most of his early associates, his death was mourned by thousands of western people in December, 1916. His wife, Eunice M. Clark, was born in an emigrant train while going from Colorado to Utah. Her father, Jefferson Wright, was of an old New England family that came from England in 1722 and settled in Connecticut. Her mother was Alice Angel, whose ancestors came from England in 1726 and settled in the Naugituck Valley of Connecticut. Walter Gordon Clark, who was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, October 10, 1876, has exhibited during his active life many of the strong and rugged qualities which distinguished his ancestry, and like his honored father has accomplished a great deal of pioneering work in the West. His profession was almost a matter of inheritance and he had no hesitation as to the work he would follow. He was educated in the public schools of Utah, attended Salt Lake Academy, and in 1895 was graduated with the A. B. degree from the University of Utah. Later he studied engineering in the University of California, at Berkeley, and he also received special instruction in mining and metallurgical engineering under Dr. Carl A. Steatyfeldt, of San Francisco and Berlin. For a time Mr. Clark directed research work in Columbia University. About 1898 he established engineering offices in San Francisco. During the Spanish-American war in that year he assisted in putting in the submarine defenses in San Francisco Bay. In 1900 he organized the Kilbourne- Clark Company at Seattle, and engaged in engineering and manufacturing. Mr. Clark was one of the developers of the radio telegraph in America. In 1905 he returned east and became engineer and manager for the Ansonia Brass & Copper Company at Ansonia, New York. In 1908 he established his engineering offices in New York City. For over twenty years he has conducted an engineering business for himself. For several years he acted as consulting engineer for the Victoria Falls & Transvaal Power Company of South Africa, with offices in New York, London and Paris. During the World war period the European offices were closed, and during that time he acted as consulting engineer for the navy department. At the close of the war Mr. Clark became an associate of Gen. George W. Goethals, an association that continued until the death of that great American engineer. Mr. Clark was one of the organizers of the Biltmore Hotel Corporation of Los Angeles. He moved his offices to this city in 1921. Since then he has been engaged in a general consulting engineering work, specializing in mining, civil and electrical engineering. Beginning in 1900 Mr. Clark has spent several months each year along the Colorado River. He was one of the first engineers to make a reconnaissance and survey of that river with a view to the development of its potential power resources. His investigation included the site of the present Boulder Dam, construction work on which was started in 1930. As an engineer his work has taken him to many widely separated fields. He directed some mining developments in the Yukon territory of Alaska, including the installation of important hydraulic power. For several years he was associated with the Dr. F. S. Pearson interests of New York in hydraulic and electrical development in Mexico, Brazil and in the Argentine. Mr. Clark is a fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the Association for the Advancement of Science. He is licensed as a consulting engineer by the Board of Regents of the University of New York, and is licensed by the State of California as a civil engineer. He is a fellow of the Council of the National Geographic Society and president of the Pacific Geographical Society. For twenty-five years he has been a member of the Union League Club of New York. He is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, and his instruction for the second and third degrees as a Master Mason was given him by the late Chauncey Depew of New York. Mr. Clark is a member of the Faculty Club of Columbia University, the Jonathan Club of Los Angeles, and in politics is a Republican. He was active in the Roosevelt and Taft presidential campaigns and was a member of the finance committee of the Republican National Committee during the Taft campaign. Mr. Clark married, December 25, 1926, Miss June Conway, of Washington, D. C. Her parents, John and Mary A. Conway, were for many years residents of the District of Columbia. They are of English-Irish descent and their ancestry includes some old Virginia families who came to America immediately following the Revolutionary war. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/losangeles/bios/clark1075gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/cafiles/ File size: 10.5 Kb