Michael Maurice O'Shaughnessy (28 May 1864 – 12 October 1934) was an Irish civil engineer who became city engineer for the city of San Francisco during the early twentieth century and developed both the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) and the Hetch Hetchy water system. He is sometimes credited as being "the Irishman who built San Francisco."
Early life, education, and immigration O'Shaughnessy was born to farmers Patrick and Margaret () at the family cottage named Jointer in Loughill Parish, County Limerick, Ireland on May 28, 1864; he was one of nine children. At two years old, he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents, approximately east of his birthplace, along with his Uncle Maurice, Aunt Alice, sister Kate, and cousin Margaret O'Clery, who had been orphaned. In 1875, he entered the Mount Trenchard National School and completed his studies there on September 25, 1880, whereupon he tried his hand at farming briefly before deciding to train as a civil engineer. He began those studies at Rockwell College in County Tipperary for half a year, starting from January 1881, and later attended University College Cork for a year starting in fall 1881 and the University of Galway the next fall, then graduated from the Royal University of Dublin on October 21, 1884.
After returning to the family home for a few months, O'Shaughnessy visited London in January 1885 to sightsee and apply for a position, but was encouraged to pursue his career in California instead. He departed from Liverpool on March 8, 1885 aboard the Guion Mail Steamer with a cousin, J.S. Molony, arriving in New York on March 18. After arriving, he purchased a cross-country railroad ticket for and arrived in San Francisco on March 30, having traveled via rail through Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Ogden, and Oakland, completing the trip via ferry from the Oakland mole. He took mass at Old St. Mary's Cathedral the next day.
He married Mary Spottiswood on October 21, 1890 in San Francisco. After a month-long honeymoon to St. Louis, they lived with her parents for two years.
Career The new Californian None of the letters of introduction that O'Shaughnessy had carried from Ireland led to a job, but he remained active in the local Irish community, where he struck up a friendship with Dr. Buckley, who had graduated from Queen's College Cork and arranged for O'Shaughnessy to start as an assistant engineer for the Sierra Valley & Mohawk Railway in Plumas County, California in January 1886, at the salary of per month, with board included. After three or four months, O'Shaughnessy was dismissed; on the stage back to San Francisco, he received a letter from the Southern Pacific Railroad offering employment, where he was responsible for laying out the towns of Niles, Tracy, Sanger, Lindsay, Porterville, Merced, Mill Valley, and Dinuba between 1886 and 1888. After leaving SP, O'Shaughnessy began his consulting engineering practice.
On July 4, 1890, O'Shaughnessy went hiking to the top of Mount Tamalpais with his fiancée Mary and several of her siblings; the day was hot and he had brought of water, but it was all consumed before they reached the top. While O'Shaughnessy was looking for an easier route down the mountain, he found a brook just below the summit and refilled his jug, returning to refresh the party's spirits for the descent. A few days later, he described to the Tamalpais Land & Water Company how he proposed to route the water from the brook to supply water for Mill Valley without an expensive dam; he completed the design and surveying for the water project by the time he married Mary in October.
O'Shaughnessy's involvement with the city and county of San Francisco began in the early 1890s. In 1891, he was contracted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (SFBOS), then controlled by Democrats, to survey the extension of Market Street over Twin Peaks and subsequently was cheated out of his contracted fee of ; the next year, he was contracted again by the SFBOS, then controlled by Republicans, for an extension of Potrero Avenue from Ninth Street to the county line, and again was cheated out of . In 1893, he served as the chief engineer for the California Midwinter Exposition held in Golden Gate Park. On June 1, 1893, he moved with his growing family (then with two children) to a new house in Mill Valley. While planning the Expo, he had to work with John McLaren, who forbade him from cutting any trees.
O'Shaughnessy also was responsible for surveying a site for a race course near Ingleside in 1890; originally, he had been contracted to survey a course on property that belonged to the Spring Valley Water Company, but the chief engineer of Spring Valley, Hermann Schussler, rejected the proposal over objections to stable waste, so O'Shaughnessy surveyed what would become the Ingleside course at his own expense. Later, after being introduced to Edward C. Corrigan in 1894, he convinced Corrigan to abandon an alternative site north of Ocean Avenue and build at Ingleside instead. After reviewing some surveys at the end of 1894 by traveling to the site in person, he began serving as the chief engineer of the Mountain Copper Company, part of the Iron Mountain Mine of Shasta County, where he supervised the construction of the Iron Mountain Railway (California), of narrow-gauge railway in 1895. Outside of this work, which involved surveying the right-of-way for a railroad and building it, O'Shaughnessy kept busy surveying a rail route between Eureka and Red Bluff (1896–97) and working for Schussler to survey potential additions for Spring Valley Water in Alameda County (1898).
Irrigating Hawaiian sugar
He then turned his attention to the Territory of Hawaii, after Schussler called him on behalf of Edward Pollitz to map what would become the Wailuku Sugar Plantation in May 1899. After arriving at Honolulu, he took a train to the Waianae Sugar Company plantation and hiked to visit water tunnels nearby, through which flowed . He then booked passage to the island of Hawaii to visit the plantation. Warned of Hawaii's monsoons, O'Shaughnessy prepared by outfitting himself with rubber hat, coat, and boots, causing the plantation manager to have a laughing fit at his ridiculous appearance when they first met, but O'Shaughnessy had the last laugh as that day turned out to be quite wet. He returned to San Francisco on July 4, laden with notes, data, and curios as he thought he would never return to Hawaii, but in September of that year, O'Shaughnessy was retained by George Robertson (son of George Morison Robertson) of C. Brewer & Co. to review a proposed aqueduct connecting a pumping station at Kaunakakai on Molokai to a plantation approximately to the west, prompting his return to the islands. His report impressed the company, which then hired him as a consulting engineer, reserving of his time over three years at an annual salary of .
He essentially moved his engineering office from San Francisco to Hawaii, arriving in January 1900, but was quarantined upon arrival in Honolulu due to an outbreak of the plague which would lead to the fire and partial destruction of the local Chinatown. After returning to Kaunakakai, O'Shaughnessy sunk some test wells and discovered that at the proposed pumping rate, the irrigation water would become contaminated with salt, which proved true once the station began operating in May, causing the plantation on Molokai to founder and he was let go by the company. However, O'Shaughnessy would spend the next 11 months consulting on numerous water projects and developing a reputation as the authoritative water engineer in Hawaii before returning to San Francisco that December. Through 1906, O'Shaughnessy worked on surveying routes for and supervising the construction of large aqueducts in Hawaii, including the Olokele (Kauai, 1901–03), stretching to the Makaweli Plantation; Koolau, aka Nahiku Ditch (Maui, 1903–04), which included a tunnel section over its length; and Kohala (Hawaii, 1905–06), which had 45 tunnels with an aggregate length of and an overall length of .https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/hb5d5nb6sr/dsc/ His time in Hawaii was interrupted by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire, which he learned of on April 18 during a trip to Honolulu to procure cement; O'Shaughnessy booked passage on the next available ship.
O'Shaughnessy published a paper describing irrigation in Hawaii for the Hawaiian Planters' Monthly for October 1904, later republished in Thrum's Hawaiian Annual (1905), updated for Engineering News (1909) and subsequently reprinted nearly a century later in Organization & Environment (2007). Jack London visited Hawaii in 1907 with his wife Charmian, who praised O'Shaughnessy for his "magnificent irrigation scheme that harnessed the abundant waterfalls and tremendously increased the output of the invaluable sugar plantations" after viewing the systems on Maui and Hawaii.
Return to California After returning to San Francisco from Hawaii, he met with James Rolph, who was heading an earthquake relief committee at the time. The meeting was to discuss business: Rolph held an option to purchase the more than San Vincente Ranch near Santa Cruz, and he wanted O'Shaughnessy to inspect the property and report back to Rolph on its condition. This done, O'Shaughnessy returned to Hawaii to close out his work on Kohala, staying there for approximately one month, and upon his second return to San Francisco, happened to chance upon an acquaintance from the Mountain Copper Company, M. C. Couchot, who had previously handled drafting work for the engineer. Couchot told O'Shaughnessy that he was now heading a construction company near Marysville and jokingly, O'Shaughnessy suggested they form a partnership, to which Couchot agreed; however, O'Shaughnessy quickly grew tired of the resulting work, in which he would provide estimated construction costs for owners of proposed buildings that would follow the plans through to completion.
In December 1906, O'Shaughnessy was contacted by the brothers John D. and Adolph B. Spreckels, who asked him to inspect the work in progress on Morena Dam, which they were building at Barrett near San Diego to supply water to the city, and estimate the cost and schedule to complete it. O'Shaughnessy was hired by John Spreckels to act as a consulting engineer for the project in May 1907; a construction contract was let that July and water began flowing to the city's Lower Otay Reservoir via the Dulzura Conduit, an aqueduct connected to Morena Dam, on January 3, 1909, six months ahead of schedule. Construction of the dam itself was not completed until 1912; by that time, O'Shaughnessy had been recruited by Rolph, now serving as Mayor of San Francisco. He reluctantly packed up his belongings and left San Diego in August. On December 28, the Spreckels brothers called O'Shaughnessy to their offices in San Francisco, where they presented him with a bonus check "in five figures to make up the deficit which they felt they owed me".
City Engineer of San Francisco