Henry C. Holderman

Henry C. Holderman was first credited with envisioning a dam across the Grand River to bring hydroelectric power to the Cherokee Nation. As a teenager hauling lumber between Chetopa, Kansas and the Spavinaw Hills on a route through the Grand River Valley, he first formed that vision. Later, in 1896, Holderman, his brother Bert, and two engineering students from the Spalding Institute in Muskogee, Oklahoma, built a raft and floated the river from Lola, Kansas to Muskogee while looking for possible dam sites. The location they selected was very near the area where the engineers who actually built Pensacola Dam would begin construction almost 40 years later.

Oklahoma · United States