William Knox Holt Memorial Library

Benjamin Holt invented the first track-type tractor in Stockton in 1904. His son William Knox Holt was a benefactor of the library.

Upon its opening in 1986, the just completed new wing of the Library was named the William Knox Holt Memorial Library. Just inside the entrance, a bronze plaque links the naming of what was, then, the newest wing of the Library to a generous gift from the William Knox Holt Foundation of San Francisco. Holt, who passed away in 1977 at age 85, was a generous philanthropist and supporter of a number of humanitarian causes, many anonymously.

Son of the late Benjamin Holt of Stockton, noted inventor of the Caterpillar Tractor, "Bill" Holt was born in Stockton and was a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. Interviewed by the San Mateo Times in Summer 1977, he recalled his father’s work. His father was having trouble with the steam boiler-operated wheel units of his farm machinery. "They just wouldn’t stay on top of the soil, because the soil in that Delta area is almost nothing but peat." Experimenting in the Delta, his father devised a treadmill to support the weight of the heavy machinery. In 1904, he took out U.S. patents on the track and method of hinging together the roller frames which hold the rollers together that carry the weight of the tractor. He opened the Holt Manufacturing Co. in Stockton that same year. Due to the success of his invention, Ben Holt "was known far and wide in the Valley and in agriculture in general as the ‘farmer’s friend,’" Bill Holt recalled. The success of Holt’s tractors also attracted the interest of the U.S. and British military which later utilized the track mechanism for tanks and moving heavy artillery.

Bill Holt worked in his father’s firm, acquired in 1925 by the Caterpillar Tractor Co. He began distributing tractors in Mexico and Europe and later developed many new land-clearing devices for Texas. He retired in 1962 as sales executive and director. A frequent visitor to Stockton, Bill Holt attended the 1976 dedication of the Holt-Atherton Pacific Center for Western Studies (later renamed the Library’s Holt-Atherton Department named in memory of his mother, Mrs. Benjamin Holt, Regent of the University of the Pacific, 1921-1949, his sister, Ann Holt Atherton, and his brother-in-law, Warren Atherton). Inside the Special Collections department, the Holt Atherton Room – without the hyphen – is named for Bill's nephew. (More information will be provided on the Athertons in another issue of Speaking Volumes.)