Justin Waples examines the life and work of an Irish engineer that helped build the foundations of one of the most iconic cities in the world, San Francisco. 

In the 1860s, Ireland was on the verge of slipping into yet another famine. The mass emigration of Irish citizens was continuing. The heavy chasm left in the fabric of Ireland’s communities was monumental and indelible.

It was during this time that Michael O’Shaughnessy was born; in 1864, on a farm near the village of Loughhill, Co Limerick, on the southern shores of the Shannon estuary. It is at this juncture we will pick up on our quest to try and uncover why the Irish have produced so many phenomenal engineers.

An industrial crisis emerged in Ireland in the 1870s, triggered by the Great Depression developing in Britain. The large-scale industrial production emerging from mechanisation in countries abroad really had begun to strain Ireland’s economic competitiveness.

The cheap agricultural exports from the United States that were flooding the European market further strained an already very difficult situation for Ireland, its people, and its economy. Even with strong-willed Irish determination, the odds were once again, heavily stacked against the country.

The only way for Ireland to survive, and emerge from this economic crevasse, was to be more creative, more tenacious, and more inventive than its competition. And as engineering history attests, Irish engineers had those characteristics in spades.

Michael O’Shaughnessy (1864-1934). Image: Courtesy Wikimedia Creative Commons.

As an infant, O’Shaughnessy was sent to live with his grandparents and extended family. This was perhaps brought about as a means to help keep his belly full, as he was one of nine hungry children born to subsistence farmers.

After O’Shaughnessy left school he initially followed the footsteps of his parents and toiled at farming before turning his energies towards an engineering education.

He had a patch-work of Irish colleges under his belt before he finished his engineering studies in 1884 at the Royal University Dublin (Trinity College). The following year he emigrated to the United States, and this is where things really start to get interesting.

After arriving in New York in 1885, he bought a train ticket to San Francisco. His journey across the North American continent on the transcontinental railroad would have taken him the best part of a week, and at the time it was state-of-the-art travel.

The alternative method to cross the continent would have been a gruelling six-month stage-coach trip across the prairies and up and over the treacherous Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, which sit about 4,500m above sea level. It was in California where O’Shaughnessy put his feet firmly on the ground and started his engineering career in earnest as an Irish expat.

He got his first break in the new land working as an assistant engineer for a rail company in the mile-high sierras between California and Nevada, with the Sierra Valley and Mohawk Railway company.

Significant engineering surveys

During this first decade in California, he toiled from rail engineering to water engineering and anything in between. However, O’Shaughnessy had developed some real misgivings in San Francisco after not being compensated for some significant engineering surveys he completed for the rapidly growing city.

His resilience and tenacity, though, shone through. As chief engineer for the San Francisco Midwinter International Exposition in 1894 he designed the layout of the 200-acre site that consisted of 120 structures.

O’Shaughnessy had to create his exposition plan while working within one particular constraint that was stipulated by the park’s superintendent, Scotsman John McLaren: he was not permitted to fell any trees.

This constraint was most unusual for the time when there was general attitude that the only good tree was a felled tree; though given McLaren was an old friend of John Muir it was hardly surprising.

Revolutionary electrification

When the exposition opened to the public, the revolutionary electrification of much of the exposition’s fairground left many visitors in awe when night crept in. Every night the expo grew into a magnificent beacon of shining lights, on what would have otherwise been a dimly light San Francisco peninsula. It was truly a sight to behold.

Midwinter International Exposition, San Francisco. Image: courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons.

As the 19th century was coming to an end, O’Shaughnessy received an invitation from a prominent US stockbroker, Edward Pollitz, to travel the better part of 4,000km across the Pacific ocean to the exotic islands of Hawaii.

After completing some brief engineering projects there, O’Shaughnessy returned to San Francisco. Within months he was approached again, this time by C Brewer and Co, and soon returned to the Hawaiian islands.

Pivot towards hydraulics

It was around this time that he began to pivot his engineering practice towards hydraulics. His remarkable abilities in this field saw him become very sought-after by many of the biggest and wealthiest agricultural companies in Hawaii.

O’Shaughnessy with his faithful mule Billy, circa 1899, Hawaii. Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons.

But it was the tragedy of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that captured O’Shaughnessy’s heart and led him back to the USA mainland where he was to become an engineering legend.

The earthquake was so strong it rattled towns more than 400km away, but it was perhaps the firestorm that was the most devastating of all. It was estimated that a staggering 80% of the city had been destroyed. More than 100,000 residents had lost their homes.

Post San Francisco 1906 earthquake and fires. Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons.

The need for engineers to reconstruct the city of San Francisco was high, though it took a few years before O’Shaughnessy could really unleash his talents. In the interim, he completed several significant water supply projects for California that included constructing key dams for the rapidly expanding Californian population.

It was James Rolph though, whom O’Shaughnessy meet a few years earlier in San Francisco, that changed the course of O’Shaughnessy’s career. Rolph was now the mayor of San Francisco.

City engineer

Bitterness lingered in O’Shaughnessy for the bureaucrats of San Francisco but Rolph won him over, and brought the Irishman onboard as the city engineer, just when the devastated city was beginning to be rebuilt. The mediocre renumeration on offer did not entice O’Shaughnessy, though the prospect of recreating the infrastructure from an almost blank canvass certainly did.

His appointment as the city engineer in 1912 was pivotal in the reconstruction of key infrastructure. Aside from implementing the streetcar system in San Francisco, (which is still operating today), O’Shaughnessy implemented critical water infrastructure projects, including the Mile Rock Tunnel and the much more ambitious project, the Hetch Hetchy water supply system.

Mile Rock Tunnel Ceremonial Inspection August 26, 1915. Image: Courtesy Wikimedia Creative Commons.

Designed by O’Shaughnessy, the Mile Rock Tunnel was essential to alleviate the crippled sewage and storm drainage needs of the burgeoning San Francisco population.

Aptly named due to it being a tad shy of a mile long (1,290m), the tunnel was the first constructed in the city that used open-cut timber cribbing as well as boring through about 274m of solid rock.

Leading engineering innovation

A state-of-the-art pneumatic application system was used to apply concrete lining to the tunnel. The design of the structure was an example of the leading engineering innovation that was blossoming in the city under O’Shaughnessy’s watch. The tunnel is still used today, albeit as an emergency discharge conduit for San Francisco’s combined sewer system.

The firestorm that broke out following the 1906 earthquake highlighted the inadequacy of the city’s existing water supply system. If one had to choose O’Shaughnessy’s crowning engineering achievement for the West Coast city, many would choose his role in overseeing the design and construction of the Hetch Hetchy water supply system.

The system includes a reservoir (with hydroelectric power generation), in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and an extensive aqueduct pipeline. Together the system today supplies San Francisco’s 2.7 million residents located 270km away.  

Hetch Hetchy Water Supply System. Image: Courtesy Wikimedia Creative Commons.

Michael O’Shaughnessy passed away in 1934, just two weeks prior to the city of San Francisco receiving the first water from the Hetch Hetchy water supply system.

It provides some of the USA’s cleanest municipal water: in part due to the granite valley in which the dam is situated in the high Sierra (at an elevation of 4,000 feet), and also due to the strictly governed public use of the alpine water body.

The many engineering legacies that Michael O’Shaughnessy left for the city of San Francisco were instrumental in the city becoming the great metropolis it is today. From railroads, to roadways, to tunnels, dams and aqueducts, his amazing infrastructure legacy continues to this day. 

Author: Justin Waples is an infrastructure asset planning engineer and intrapreneurial programme manager pursuing sustainability and resiliency in the built environment. He is a civil environmental engineer at Central Contra Costa Sanitary District, San Francisco Bay area.

References

1) Long, P; (2009) Michael O’Shaughnessy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy

2) Maniery, M; (1995) Mile Rock Tunnel; Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, San Francisco, USA.

3) O’Malley, E; (1981); The Decline of the Irish Industry in the Nineteenth Century, University of Sussex, UK.

4) O’Shaughnessy, M. M; (1934) Hetch Hetchy, Its Origin and Its History, Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, San Francisco, USA.