Morris K. “Mike” Snyder (1874-1961) entered WSC as a student in Civil Engineering in 1898. He would be hired as Washington State College faculty in 1905 and remain there for 42 years before retiring. He became head of the department of Civil Engineering in 1930. He also served as mayor of Pullman, Washington while a faculty member, his term running from 1923 to 1926.
The collection is explained by a single piece of included correspondence between three people: M. K. Snyder, head of the WSC department of Civil Engineering; Lacey Murrow, head of the Washington State Department of Highways; and Clark H. Eldridge, a bridge engineer. Murrow was requesting a bibliography of pontoon bridge engineering, presumably for what would become the first floating bridge across Lake Washington.
The main body of the collection consists of notes for that bibliography (Snyder states that he did send them a finished bibliography, but it is not present here). These include materials from a 1937 floating bridge patent awarded to a Stirling R. Hill, six pages of pencil notes, a single page “United States Army bibliography,” and a three-page report from the Engineering Sciences Library of the United Engineering Trustees, Inc.
Another final piece is the letter Snyder sent to the WSC Libraries to accompany/explain these materials.
The materials are retained in the order they were received in, with Snyder’s donation note at front, then the bibliographic materials, then the correspondence with Murrow and Eldridge at the end.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions may apply.
[Item description]
Material on Pontoons and Floating Bridges, 1937 (Cage 5174)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
These materials were received from M.K. Snyder, head of the WSC department of Civil Engineering, at the WSC Libraries on June 28, 1941. They were apparently made part of the archives, as at one point they were stored in the Archives and Manuscripts Room given as Women’s Gym 211 (this would have been before the opening of Holland Library in 1950). However, at some point they were moved to the Owen Science and Engineering Library.
Owen Science and Engineering Library transferred them to Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collection in fall 2023.
University Archivist Mark O’English processed this collection in April 2026.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.