W. R. Holway

Who was W. R. Holway?

William Rea Holway, commonly known as W. R. Holway, was an American civil engineer who became prominent in Oklahoma. He is best known for his work on major water supply projects for the city of Tulsa, and on the Pensacola Dam at Grand Lake o' the Cherokees.

Holway came to Tulsa in 1918, where he became the city waterworks engineer. In 1920, he was hired as a consulting engineer to plan a pipeline to carry water from Lake Spavinaw to Tulsa. He founded the firm W. R. Holway and Associates in 1922. Holway was chief engineer for the Pensacola Dam, which created the Grand Lake o' the Cherokees on the Grand River, in northeastern Oklahoma. Construction began in 1938 and was completed in 1940. At the time, this was the longest multiple-arch dam in the world. In 1952, W. R. Holway and Associates was the engineering firm that built Lake Eucha, which functions as additional storage and as a buffer for Lake Spavinaw.