Chester Harding (governor)

Chester Harding ( born December 31, 1866 in Enterprise, Clarke County, Mississippi, † November 11, 1936 ) was an American engineer and 1917-1921 Governor of the Panama Canal Zone.

Life

After schooling, he studied engineering at the University of Alabama and earned a Bachelor of Science there in 1884 (B.Sc. Engineering ). After Harding entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was moved to its completion on 12 June 1889 as a second lieutenant for the Army Corps of Engineers ( USACE ). There he was promoted to lieutenant and finally, on July 5, 1898 to Captain over time on August 12, 1890 Lieutenant, January 26, 1895.

In 1907 he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone and was for several years the district engineer at Gatúnsee before he in 1915 was appointed chief engineer. He was then in 1917 Governor of the Panama Canal Zone and held this post until 1921.

In these functions, Harding was responsible for numerous construction projects such as limiting installations, the operation of the Building Department and the continuation of the buildings at the Hospital of Ancon, the incinerator in Balboa, the industrialization plan for the railway company Panama Railroad, the construction of the pier 6 in Cristóbal and the regular dredging on Culebra and Cucaracha incision because of landslides, with more than 3.8 million cubic meters have been dredged in five years.