Michael O'Shaughnessy

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; 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 1893, he served as the chief engineer for the California Midwinter Exposition held in Golden Gate Park. 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 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. Koolau, aka Nahiku Ditch (Maui, 1903–04), which included a tunnel section over its length; 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. completing the tunnel along Stockton in late December, and starting construction on the Twin Peaks Tunnel, which was planned and built under O'Shaughnessy's leadership; as a compromise to rein in potential costs, O'Shaughnessy shortened the length of the Twin Peaks Tunnel originally proposed by Bion Arnold, cutting the construction budget from $7 million to $4M. O'Shaughnessy also oversaw construction of the Sunset Tunnel in the 1920s, the final rail tunnel built in San Francisco until the completion of the Market Street subway in the 1970s for BART and the new Muni Metro light rail/streetcar system.

Aside from overhauling the city's public transportation system, O'Shaughnessy also completed the work begun under his predecessors to rebuild the city's fire-fighting water and sewer services. His plans for the Mile Rock Tunnel, a sewer outfall draining much of the western half of the city, were approved by the SF Board of Public Works in January 1914 and Mile Rock was in use by September 1915; it was large enough that a party of officials, including Mayor Rolph and Engineer O'Shaughnessy, drove its length for an inspection just days before it was completed.

The majority of O'Shaughnessy's time as city engineer was spent on the Hetch Hetchy Valley project, which would bring water from the Tuolumne River in Yosemite to San Francisco, a distance of . The project had been started under Manson's predecessor, Carl E. Grunsky, but protests kept delaying the project until President Woodrow Wilson granted the federal lands in Yosemite National Park to the city in 1912, approved under the 1913 Raker Act.

Legacy The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley holds an archive with primary source material relating to O'Shaughnessy's job as City Engineer of SF.

O'Shaughnessy Dam, which impounds the water at Hetch Hetchy, is named for the longtime city engineer.

Glen Canyon Park and winding O'Shaughnessy Blvd are centered in this 2010 aerial photo, view facing east. In the lower left are the track & field for Ruth Asawa School. In addition, O'Shaughnessy Boulevard in San Francisco, which serves as an extension of Bosworth Street and runs next to Glen Canyon Park, was named in his honor; the undeveloped area immediately west of O'Shaughnessy is known as O'Shaughnessy Hollow. Muni runs the busy 44 O'Shaughnessy route along the eponymous street, connecting the Richmond and Hunters Point neighborhoods.