11 



Throughout his career, but especially in its middle portion, Mr. 

 Holmes was interested in street railway construction, having built the 

 Powell Street, the Union Street and the lower end of the California 

 Street cable railways in San Francisco, the cable railways at Portland, 

 Oregon, Spokane, Wash., and the Madison Street cable line in Seattle, 

 besides electric railways in Oakland, Alameda and Stockton, California. 



Port and terminal work, however, during most of his career was 

 his major interest, and that in which his national reputation was 

 made. Early in his career he was Assistant Engineer of the Califor- 

 nia Board of State Harbor Commissioners, resigning this position to 

 build the Alameda, Calif., mole and depot for what was then the South 

 Pacific Coast Railways Company. He designed a method of protecting 

 wooden piles from marine borers by encasing them in a concrete 

 sleeve, which has had extensive use in the San Francisco Bay region. 

 Asi Chief Engineer of the Board of State Harbor Commisisoners, from 

 1892 to 1901, he built many of the piers on the San Francisco water 

 front, including the water terminals of every railroad entering Sari 

 Francisco, excepting the Southern Pacific. And the latter road in- 

 stalled in its slips freight and passenger hoists designed by Mr. -Holmes. 



On resigning from the Harbor Commission position, Mr. Holmes 

 devoted special attention to dry dock construction, in which he became 

 a nationally recognized authority. As Chief Engineer of the San Fran- 

 cisco Dry Dock Company, whose dock was then the largest graving 

 dock on the Pacific Coast, he designed the Hunter's Point Dry Dock, 

 which is still one of the largest in the world. He was still Chief En- 

 gineer of this Company at the time of his death, although maintaining 

 also the most extensive consulting practice in the city, in water front 

 engineering lines. In 1904 Mr. Holmes was commissioned to report 

 for the Boston, Mass., Harbor and Land Board on the respective merits 

 of graving and floating docks. He planned the Canadian Government 

 dry dock at Victoria, B. C. Many other docks and terminals on San 

 Francisco Bay were also built by Mr. Holmes, including those of the 

 Oakland-San Francisco Terminal Railways and the Richmond Belt 

 Railway. For many years preceding his death he was consulting 

 engineer for an imposing array of institutions, including many of the 

 greatest international shipping and commercial companies having tide- 

 water structures on this Bay- No other engineer in this region had 

 probably a wider or more intimate acquaintance with every detail of 

 the complex history of port and waterfront development in this region 

 than had Mr. Holmes. The loss in his death is very great to the San 

 Francisco Bay Marine Piling Committee, which unanimously joins in 

 this acknowledgement of its debt to him, and extends to the bereaved 

 widow and the business associates of Mr. Holmes its heartfelt sym- 

 pathy. 



