W. R. Holway

William Rea Holway (April 29, 1893 – April 23, 1981), commonly known as W. R. Holway, was an American civil engineer who became prominent in Oklahoma. He is best known for his work on major water supply projects for the city of Tulsa, and on the Pensacola Dam at Grand Lake o' the Cherokees.

Holway came to Tulsa in 1918, where he became the city waterworks engineer. In 1920, he was hired as a consulting engineer to plan a pipeline to carry water from Lake Spavinaw to Tulsa.^[1] He founded the firm W. R. Holway and Associates in 1922.^[2] Holway was chief engineer for the Pensacola Dam, which created the Grand Lake o' the Cherokees on the Grand River (the lower Neosho River), in northeastern Oklahoma. Construction began in 1938 and was completed in 1940. At the time, this was the longest multiple-arch dam in the world. In 1952, W. R. Holway and Associates was the engineering firm that built Lake Eucha, which functions as additional storage and as a buffer for Lake Spavinaw.^[3]

He and his family also contributed to other aspects of Tulsa's development. In 1922, he was a co-founder of All Souls Unitarian Church, with Richard Lloyd Jones, owner of the Tulsa Tribune, In 1922, his wife founded the Tulsa Little Theater, which was later renamed Theatre Tulsa. Years later, after All Souls had become the largest Unitarian church in the United States, Hope Holway was honored when the Hope Unitarian Universalist Church was named for her. Both of their sons became engineers and joined their father's consulting firm.