Leah Moncure, P.E.

🏛️The era

Leah Moncure was born in Bastrop in 1904, when Texas roads were mostly dirt and the automobile was still a novelty. Over her lifetime the state built one of the largest highway networks in the country, and the Texas Highway Department, created in 1917, became the agency at the center of that work.

Engineering was then almost entirely a man's field. Women who loved mathematics were usually steered toward teaching. Many universities and employers did not expect, or welcome, women in engineering programs or on design staffs.

In 1937, after the deadly New London school explosion in East Texas, the state passed a law requiring engineers to be licensed. Registration as a professional engineer, the "P.E." after a name, became the mark of a qualified practitioner, and it is against this background that Moncure made history.

👥People & events

Leah grew up the daughter of Cassius Lee "C.L." Moncure, a Bastrop County surveyor and civil engineer, and Hattie Nuckols Moncure. The family moved into a house on Main Street in 1911. As a girl she learned her father's tools, materials, and methods, and often worked as his draftsman.

Doctors did not expect her to live to adulthood, because she was born with a congenital heart defect. She persevered. In 1925 she graduated from Baylor University with high honors in mathematics and education. Engineering jobs were hard to come by for a woman, so she taught in Houston for a year and then worked for a consulting firm.

Realizing she needed a civil engineering degree, she enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin and graduated in 1937. On April 22, 1938, she became Engineer No. 2250, the first woman registered as a professional engineer in Texas and, for years, the only one. She also became the first female life member of the National Society of Professional Engineers.

She spent 32 years with the Texas Highway Department in research, right-of-way, and road design in East Texas and Austin. After retiring in 1964 she returned to her childhood home on Main Street. A UT Austin scholarship for women studying engineering was established in her name in 1965. She died in 1972 and rests in Bastrop's Fairview Cemetery.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Moncure's license came decades before the women's movement of the 1960s and '70s pushed open many professional doors. Being first in a state's engineering register meant working for years as the only woman in rooms full of men, and doing so well enough to last a full career.

Her field mattered too. Highways reshaped American life in the 20th century: how people farmed, shopped, traveled, and where towns grew or faded. Engineers who handled research, right-of-way, and road design made decisions that still shape how Texans move around.

The scholarship in her name turned a personal achievement into a path for others. Each woman who studies engineering with its support carries her example forward, which is a big part of why this marker matters.

🧭If you visit

Bastrop's historic Main Street is a pleasant place to walk, with old storefronts and the Colorado River close by. This is the street where Leah Moncure grew up, and where she came home after her career. Picture a girl tagging along with her surveyor father, learning to read the land.

As you drive in and out of town, notice the roads themselves: the curves, grades, bridges, and rights-of-way. That is the kind of careful work Moncure did for three decades.

Fairview Cemetery in Bastrop is her resting place. If you visit, please be respectful of the grounds.

Bastrop makes an easy stop between Austin and Houston. It is a great spot to share with a young person who loves math or building things, as a reminder that the first people through a door are often the ones who make it wider for everyone else.