“I Was the Boy”: Part 2

Retired Holt engineer-serviceman looks back half a century from his California ranch to recall his role in steam and gas tractor history.

By F. Hal Higgins
Published on September 1, 1953
article image
courtesy Library of Congress.
The largest sag pipe of the Los Angeles Aqueduct passes through Jawbone Canyon, shown here during construction in 1913.

In a 1953 issue of Iron-Men Album, agricultural historian F. Hal Higgins shared notes of a conversation with Paul E. Weston who had worked for Holt Mfg. Co. in the early 1900s. Higgins, who witnessed firsthand the development of mechanized agriculture in the U.S., got his start as a news editor for Caterpillar Tractor Co. in 1925.


Continued from Part 1: F. Hal Higgins’ Letter to the Editor

As Told To F. Hal Higgins in Interviews; Angels Camp, California, 1953:The big balding man flashed a smile of welcome as the writer asked if he might be the Paul Weston “who was there” when the famous Los Angeles Aqueduct was built across desert and mountains to bring water to the mushrooming West Coast city that was beginning to attract the U.S. population from the east and south nearly half a century ago.

Percy Ferguson, an old ex-Holt office man, had referred to him as one of the engineers who had been on the delivering end of a lot of early steam tractors in both wheel and crawler days before the Aurora engine began powering their gas tractors.

“I was the boy who took that first Holt steam Caterpillar to the desert to start the aqueduct job when (Los Angeles Water Department Chief Engineer William) Mulholland and his staff of engineers decided it was worth giving the ‘new Caterpillar’ idea a trial to see if they could beat horses and mules at freighting materials and equipment from the railroad stations out to the construction jobs,” Weston said.

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