Roy W. Morse

As the son of William Chester Morse, who served as chairman of the Board of Public Works and superintendent of water for Seattle from 1938 to 1949, Roy W. Morse had engineering in his blood.

While his father helped oversee some of the state's largest projects -- including the Grand Coulee Dam, and the Columbia Basin -- Roy Morse nurtured his own flair for the trade.

Morse was recruited by the Boeing Co. in 1939 to serve as the company's Administrative Engineer. Ten years later he left Boeing to follow his father's footsteps as the Seattle City Superintendent of Water. While in office from 1949 to 1955, Morse oversaw construction of several critical water transmission facilities serving Sea-Tac

As city engineer and chairman of the Board of Public Works, Roy W. Morse oversaw construction on Boundary Dam, which was completed in 1967. After two huge Toshiba generators were installed about 20 years later, the Boundary plant provided more than a third of Seattle's city-owned hydroelectric water supply.

Airport and the Bellevue-Kirkland-Mercer Island areas. He also instigated the land acquisition and development of the Tolt River water supply.

In 1957, the year when the difficult integration of Interstate 5 into Seattle's sharply graded streets began, Morse was appointed City Engineer and Chairman of the Board of Public Works. In addition to tackling that project, Morse headed up the construction of Interstate 90, I-5 and the Boundary Dam.

Also while in office, Morse paved the way for the Opera House, the Coliseum, the Monorail and other permanent buildings for the 1962 Worlds' Fair, not to mention the Tolt River Dam, reservoirs and water supply transmission lines to serve North Seattle.