The Woman Who Broke Engineering’s Glass Ceiling
By Sandra Chipley
The 1930s found Texas in full preparation for its centennial celebration. The Texas Highway Department (now TxDOT) and the Texas Centennial Commission partnered to launch a historic preservation effort that included roadside parks, landscape enhancements and a new historical marker program to welcome the expected influx of tourists for the 1936 event.
No one imagined that a young college student, hired by the Highway Department as a part-time employee, would eventually make history herself.
Pioneers on Main Street
Texas Main Streets have always been more than collections of banks, dry goods stores and other shops. They also served as downtown activity centers that gave way to the neighborhoods and prestigious residences of days gone by. These residential blocks of Main Street hold stories of families, professions and undertold Texas history.
On Bastrop’s Main Street, two remarkable women grew to adulthood in such homes. History buffs may be familiar with the tale of Claudia Wilbarger Norvell (1868-1962), known as “the Savior of the El Camino Real.”
But this story is about the other woman, one who dreamed of numbers and mathematics and of competing in a man’s world. Her name was Leah Moncure, and she was Texas’ first woman to become a registered professional engineer, making such an impact on the profession as to earn her own historical marker, dedicated in her hometown almost 90 years later.
Moncure was born in 1904, 15 minutes after her twin sister, Grace. She was born with a congenital heart defect, once referred to as “blue baby,” and doctors predicted she would not be able to “take an education” or live into adulthood. The doctors were wrong.
Moncure’s father and grandfather were surveyors, leading Leah to develop an early interest in surveying equipment and drafting tools, along with the mathematics required of the profession. She earned her bachelor’s degree with high honors from Baylor University in 1925 with a double major in mathematics and education. In 1937, she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering.
No one imagined that a young college student, hired by the Highway Department as a part-time employee, would eventually make history herself.
Tragedy Spurs Change, and Opportunity
At UT Austin, Moncure alternated semesters with working for the Texas Highway Department and taking bed rest for her heart condition. She was progressing toward her engineering degree when tragedy struck in East Texas.
In March 1937, a gas leak caused an explosion at the New London School in Rusk County. Nearly 300 people died, mostly children. It was America’s worst school disaster, and it happened at a brand-new school in one of the country’s richest districts. The public demanded answers: Shouldn’t engineers be required to meet competency standards?
The Texas Legislature responded by requiring professional licensing for engineers starting in 1938. Moncure was among the first group to apply, and in April of that year, she became Texas’ first woman to become a registered professional engineer.
Breaking Barriers
Moncure was a woman of many firsts: the first female engineer to work for the Texas Highway Department, the first life member of the National Society of Professional Engineers and the first female member of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers.
Shortly after she obtained her license, her achievements were chronicled in Texas Parade magazine with this observation: “Her seven years of professional practice in the highway engineering field have made her as familiar with highway plans and blueprints as the average woman with a dress pattern or curtain making. Although she might be termed an invader into man’s precincts, Miss Moncure holds her position by merit and asks no quarter from any of her male co-workers.”
In 1964, she retired after 32 years with the Texas Highway Department. The Travis Chapter Auxiliary of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers established the Leah Moncure Memorial Scholarship in 1965 for female engineering students at UT Austin’s School of Engineering. Moncure died in 1972 and was buried in Bastrop’s Historic Fairview Cemetery.
Marker for a Hometown Hero
In 2025, a Texas Historical Marker was dedicated in her honor at a ceremony conducted by the King’s Highway Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Bastrop County Historical Commission. The marker is located along the sidewalk in front of the historic Moncure House at 1601 Main St., the house where Moncure grew up and to which she retired in 1964.
Today, thanks to the efforts of her hometown and these historical organizations, the story of this remarkable Bastrop native will not be forgotten and is now available for all to see.
As a service project for her local DAR chapter, Sandra Chipley, RLA, ASLA, wrote the Undertold Marker Application, “Leah Moncure, P.E. #2250, Texas’ First Woman Engineer.” It was approved by the Texas Historical Commission in February 2021. Chipley, a landscape architect and Bastrop resident, retired from TxDOT in 2023. Interestingly, she first learned of Leah Moncure’s story through an article in a TxDOT employee magazine, while she was serving as president of the Bastrop County Historical Society.
For additional information on Moncure, see the TxDOT archives, the Bastrop County Historical Society’s Museum archives, and Leah Moncure, June 7, 1904–January 17, 1972, a brief biography by her twin sister, Grace Moncure Kunkel.