John S. Eastwood

John Samuel Eastwood (1857, Minnesota – 1924, California) was an American engineer who built the world's first reinforced concrete multiple-arch dam on bedrock foundation at Hume Lake, California, in 1908. Eastwood's papers are held at the Water Resources Collections and Archives, University of California, Riverside.

Born to Dutch parents in 1857 in Minnesota, Eastwood attended the University of Minnesota as a civil engineering student; prior to graduation in 1880 he headed west to work on railroad construction projects in the Pacific Northwest, including on the Northern Pacific Railroad. In 1883, he moved to Fresno, California and established an office as civil engineer and surveyor. He became Fresno's first City Engineer in 1885, but apparently was not well suited for office–bureaucratic life and soon resigned. For the remainder of his career he focused on work within the private sector or as a consulting engineer.

Early in 1895, he became chief engineer of the San Joaquin Electric Company, and was responsible for the design and construction of one of California's early hydroelectric plants. As described by George Low in the April 1896 Journal of Electricity, Eastwood employed the nascent technology of long-distance alternating current power transmission in creating a hydroelectric power system for the Fresno area. Unfortunately, the financial capabilities of the company proved insufficient to meet the great cost of constructing the dam in the remote reaches of the mountains, and, as a result, Eastwood was forced to rely on an undammed, natural supply of water to drive the turbines and generators. It was this inability to impound and store runoff that led to the demise of the San Joaquin Electric Company in 1899 after a long drought dried up the North Fork of the San Joaquin River and brought the company's power production to a standstill.

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