Fellows, Abraham Lincoln, 1864-1942

B. Nov. 1, 1864 Kennebunk, Me. Yale graduate (1886). Moved to Colorado 1887. Worked as engineer, hydrographer, and surveyor for various federal, state, and local agencies. Explored Gunnison River canyon (1901). Initiated Uncompahgre Valley project. Surveyed boundaries of national forests in Colorado and Mesa Verde National Park. D. Dec. 23, 1942 Denver, Colorado.

Abraham Lincoln Fellows (1864-1942), civil engineer, surveyed the Gunnison River and located the site for the Gunnison Tunnel Irrigation project in Colorado.

William W. Torrence (b. 1873), superintendent of the Montrose Electric Light and Power Company and amateur photographer, helped A. L. Fellows scout the Gunnison River during a surveying trip in 1901.

Abraham Lincoln Fellows was born in 1864 in Kennebunk, Maine, the son of the Reverend Franklin Ebenezer Fellows. He attended the Norwich Free Academy and then Yale University, from which he received his B.A. in 1886. After one year as a teacher of mathematics and German in Newburgh, New York, he joined the Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company in Colorado, becoming first chief engineer and then manager. In 1897 he was appointed deputy state engineer for Colorado.

From 1898 to 1902 he was resident hydrographer for the U.S. Geological Survey, and it was during this time that he explored the canyon of the Gunnison River and mapped the route for the Gunnison Tunnel, which connected the river with the Uncompahgre Valley. In 1902, he was appointed engineer for the U.S. Reclamation Service.

In 1905, he left Colorado to become state engineer for North Dakota, but he returned to Denver permanently two years later, as secretary and general manager of the Fields, Fellows, and Hutchinson Engineering Company. He served on the Public Utilities Commission of Denver from 1910 until 1916. He returned to public employment in 1918 as senior irrigation engineer for the Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, a position he held until his retirement in 1935.

Fellows married Blanche Irene McCoy in December, 1905. The couple had three children: Ella Jane Fellows Settles, John Lincoln Fellows, and Dorothy Fellows Haines. Abraham Lincoln Fellows died in Denver on December 23, 1942.