BG Charles Keller’s life reads like the story of American engineering itself—spanning rivers, harbors, wars, coasts, and the rise of the United States as an industrial and global power. Born in Rochester, New York, on February 13, 1868, Keller entered the world at a moment when the nation was still rebuilding from the Civil War and dreaming ambitiously about its future. He carried that ambition with him to West Point, where he excelled academically and graduated second in the Class of 1890. Commissioned into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he spent the next half-century shaping the infrastructure, policies, and engineering doctrine that helped modernize the country.