Celebrating the greatest profession

The accomplishments of America's civil engineers over the past century and a half are, in a word, remarkable. But often snapshots of history are every bit as telling as panoramic views, for they offer glimpses of a single moment in time glimpses of what was being planned at a particular moment, what was unfolding at that moment, what was being accomplished at that moment, or perhaps simply what was being dreamed of at that moment. That is what is presented on these 16 pages: a snapshot of the extraordinarily enterprising and exceptionally diverse accomplishments of but a sampling of American civil engineers-none of them renowned-over the past five years. Fifty or 100 years from now, when the pages of this issue are reviewed by readers for whatever reason, the remarkable achievements of these people during the final years of the 20th century and the early dawn of the 21st will present a dazzling vignette of some of the unique endeavors to which American civil engineers applied their skills and powers of invention at the beginning of the new millennium.