William Willingham

William F. Willingham, Ph. D.
Dr. Willingham has taught at the college level, served as a District and Division Historian for the Corps of Engineers, and worked as a consulting historian. He specializes and has written widely in the fields of water resources development, architectural history, historic preservation, cultural resources management, community history, and Early American and Pacific Northwest history. Major publications include Army Engineers and the Development of Oregon(1983), Waterpower in the Wilderness: A History of the Bonneville Lock and Dam (1987), Northwest Passages: A History of the Seattle District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, vols. 1 and 2 (1992, 2006), The Classic Houses of Portland, Oregon, 1850-1950(co-author, 1999), Starting Over: Community Building on the Eastern Oregon Frontier (2005), Grit and Ink: An Oregon Family’s Adventures in Newspapering, 1908-2018(2018), Engineering in the Twenty-First Century: A History of the Portland District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (co-author, 2018), Collegiate Architecture in the West: Willamette University, 1842-2012 (2019), Civil Works for the Public Good: US Army Corps of Engineers and the New Deal (2024), and Oregon Gold: A History of Mining From the Civil War into the Progressive Era(2025). He also authored numerous scholarly articles, reviews, consultant reports, and professional papers. Dr. Willingham received his Ph. D. in American History in 1972 from Northwestern University and his BA from Willamette University in 1966.

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