University of Wyoming
William Glenn Sloan (1888-1987) was an American inventor and scientist who was co-author of Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program to dam the Upper Missouri River. Sloan was born in Illinois but later moved with his family to Helena, Montana. He graduated from Montana State College with a bachelor of science in civil engineering in 1910. He then joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture and became a drainage engineer in Idaho. During World War I, he was a lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. After the war, he was a private consultant on irrigation engineering until 1936, when he joined U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in the Rio Grande Valley. In 1943 he was named Regional Director of the Billings Montana Reclamation office when he proposed using water from proposed dams on the Missouri River for 3,700,000 acres of irrigation. The plan was to be in conjunction with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed by Lewis A. Pick to build dams on the Missouri to alleviate flooding and improve navigation (known as the "Pick Plan"). The two plans which became known as the Pick-Sloan were initially enacted in the Flood Control Act of 1944. It resulted in a series of dams on the Upper Missouri as well as its tributaries which among other things generate 2.5 million kilowatts of electricity. Among his other accomplishment is a patent on the airlift pump.
The collection contains material regarding hydrological development in the Missouri River Basin and its arterial streams. Included are pamphlets and articles on water use and management in the Missouri River drainage area (1931-1957), the 1950-1951 minutes of the Missouri Basin Interagency Committee, and 1947-1950 progress reports on water development. There are copies of 1891 correspondence with U.S. Reclamation Service engineer Morris Bien regarding the Basin and photograph albums of Angostura Dam, the Belle Fourche River, Bonny Dam, Boysen Dam, the Big Thompson River, Glendo Dam and Reservoir, Heart River, Kortes Dam, Mirage Flats, Moorhead Dam, Rapid Valley Dam, Shoshone Dam (Buffalo Bill Dam), and the Upper Missouri River.
There are no access restrictions on the materials for research purposes, and the collection is open to the public.
The researcher assumes full responsibility for observing all copyright, property, and libel laws as they apply.
There are no known other archival collections created by W.G. Sloan at the date of processing.
This material was received from W.G. Sloan in 1965.
Item Description, Box Number, Folder Number, Collection Name, Collection Number, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
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