"I WAS THE BOY"
In a 1953 issue of Iron-Men Album, agricultural historian F. Hal Higgens shared notes of a conversation with a retiree who had worked for Holt Mfg. Co. in the early 1900s. Higgens, who witnessed firsthand the development of mechanized agriculture in the U.S., got his start as a news editor for Caterpillar Tractor Co. in 1925.
The focus of Higgens’ interview, Paul E. Weston, worked for Holt in the early 1900s. The company sent him to the Mojave Desert in California to demonstrate Holt’s first steam Caterpillar and sell the Los Angeles Aqueduct engineers on the merits of this new-style tractor, saying it could beat mules in freighting equipment and supplies to construction camps building the system that would bring water to fast-growing Los Angeles.
Playing a key role in that effort, Weston represented Holt Mfg. Co. at every step from trial demonstration to sale and delivery of 28 more Holt Caterpillar tractors and trains of wagons for freighting across the desert. His reminiscences, first published in 1953, showcase a pivotal period in American agriculture – and in his life.
A ngels Camp, California, 1953: The big balding man flashed a smile of welcome as the writer asked if he might be the Paul Weston “who was there” when the famous Los Angeles Aqueduct was built across desert and mountains to bring water to the mushrooming West Coast city that was beginning to attract the U.S. population from the east and south nearly half a century ago.
Percy Ferguson, an old ex-Holt office man, had referred to him as one of the engineers who had been on
