O'Shaughnessy

Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessy Archive

Update Oct 2017

• Physical exhibition opened (Michael M. O'Shaughnessy - Engineering the Promised Land)
• Digital memoir launched (Explore Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessy’s life through his own voice, Engineering Experiences: From Honolulu to Hetch Hetchy)
• Digital exhibition launched (Landing page for information about the archive, the digital memoir, and the exhibition)
• Selective digital archive published (So far, with archive items that relate to the digital memoir)

Planned

• Full digtial archvie published (all archive items)

The Archive

The Library, in partnership with the University’s College of Engineering and Informatics acquired an archive of material belonging to Michael Maurice O’Shaughnessy in 2016.

O’Shaughnessy was a Limerick man who studied Engineering in University College Galway under Professor Edward Townsend. He graduated in 1884, and crossed the Atlantic the following year to embark on his career as a Civil Engineer. He worked first as a consultant in private practice on railroads and land development work in California, and on large scale irrigation and hydraulic projects on sugar plantations in the Hawaiian Islands. After the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906, he worked on dams and channel rectification projects in San Francisco until in 1912 he was appointed the City Engineer for San Francisco. His term as City Engineer lasted until 1932 and is remembered best for the construction of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. To this day, Hetch Hetchy provides water for over 2 million residents of San Francisco and the Bay area, and its dam is named in his honour.

In 1992, O'Shaughnessy's youngest daughter Elizabeth deposited his professional papers with the Bancroft Library, at the University of Berkeley, California. His personal papers, and papers relating to his early career were sent to his family in Limerick, and these were gifted to NUI Galway in 2016. The archive in NUI Galway comprises:

• Personal papers including an unpublished memoir, diary pieces, correspondence
• Approximately 2,000 photographs illustrating civil engineering in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, as well as personal family photographs
• A comprehensive set of blueprints, maps and drawings relating to O’Shaughnessy’s early career as a private consultant

They illustrate pioneering civil engineering projects in the early 20^th century, and are an important resource for anyone interested in industrial development, conservation, and the American frontier.