Published By: Communications and Public Outreach
 O'Shaughnessy and crew. |
The initial architects of Hetch Hetchy were City Engineer Carl E. Grunsky and his successor Marsden Manson. Grunsky directed the surveys that selected the Tuolumne River as the City’s source and acquired some of its rights. Manson devoted his time almost exclusively to the project for twelve years, and continued his efforts even after he was out of office. In 1908, he conducted a survey in the mountains under Drenzy Jones, a former Tuolumne County surveyor, with two San Francisco assistant city engineers, Leslie W. Stocker and Louis Mercado.
James Rolph, Jr., affectionately known as “Sunny Jim,” assumed the office of Mayor on January 8, 1912. Less than nine months later, on September 1, he appointed O’Shaughnessy as City Engineer, with the caveat, “...you will answer only to me!” The peppery Irishman took the Mayor at his word. It is no accident that those who worked on the Hetch Hetchy Project referred to him as “The Chief.”
With a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Royal University of Dublin, Ireland, O’Shaughnessy had sailed around the Horn, arriving in San Francisco in 1885. Finding no employment in the City, his first jobs were designing a street system for Mill Valley and helping to raise Marin County’s Alpine Dam. O’Shaughnessy was 48 years old and the chief engineer of the Southern California Mountain Water Company in San Diego when Mayor Rolph summoned him to San Francisco.
The time was right for men like Rolph and O’Shaughnessy. Rolph was to become a dynamic and powerful chief executive, trusted and beloved by the people. He would serve as San Francisco’s Mayor until he was elected Governor of California in 1931.
O’Shaughnessy was a first-rate engineer — his political perception was unsurpassed. As the right hand of the masterful Rolph, O’Shaughnessy made the Hetch Hetchy project move.
But whereas “Sunny Jim” was charming and gracious, and made every stranger his friend, “The Chief,” although respected by those who worked for him, could become somewhat abrasive — a trait that was to give him trouble as the project neared completion.
There is no shortage of anecdotes about the colorful O’Shaughnessy — the man of action! On the long list of his many admirers we find, among others, the name of Jack London. Of those who sat through the Senate debate on the Raker Act, a significant number came primarily to see “The Chief” in action.
If there is a secret behind Hetch Hetchy’s phenomenal construction success, it must be that one of the most talented groups of engineers ever to come together, did so as a working team. From the first days of construction, over seven decades ago, the Hetch Hetchy challenge attracted gifted engineers. That attraction, or perhaps fascination, continues today.
Not only were there nearly impassable mountains and attendant engineering problems, there were other obstacles — a 75 percent increase in prices between 1913 and the World War I Armistice as well as attempts at political interference and foot-dragging on appropriations — but San Francisco had earned the sobriquet, “The City That Knows How,” and Hetch Hetchy was built.
San Francisco now went back to the Freeman Plan. It was a preliminary project design, with detailed estimates, for the development of a 400-milliongallon- per-day producing system, and transporting that water to the Bay Area south and east of the City.
O’Shaughnessy sent his team, on foot and on horseback, into the High Sierra for the final field surveys, while he and his staff polished the Freeman Plan to add capacity to the project, ease the supply and construction problems, and, by work scheduling, lessen the expense to the taxpayers.
The resultant work plan was to build the dam at Hetch Hetchy initially to about three-quarters of its final height, developing about 60 percent of the reservoir capacity. The aqueduct from the mountains westward would be completed to Moccasin Creek and a powerhouse put in operation at the site as soon as possible. Another aqueduct section, 23 miles long, would be built in the Coast Range from Alameda Creek, south of Sunol in Alameda County, across the Bay to the Pulgas Portal in San Mateo County. This section of the aqueduct — the Bay Division — would be ready to carry Spring Valley water as their East Bay properties were developed, earning immediate income for the City. Later the Bay Division could carry Hetch Hetchy water as the system was built westward across the San Joaquin Valley. The remaining sections of the aqueduct were to have the Tuolumne waters ready for delivery when Spring Valley sources were used to capacity, but not before then, to minimize the financial burden on San Francisco.
Not only was the magnitude of the project vast in scope, involving dams, reservoirs, conduits, powerhouses and a 150-mile-long aqueduct, but in the mountains, accessibility was a problem. It is a country difficult for mountain climbers, affording only few areas where horses can be maintained. Into this area, all manner of machinery and equipment had to be transported and thousands of workmen had to be accommodated and supplied. Nevertheless, electrically driven drills bored into granite, dynamite was a moving force, and the Hetch Hetchy Project engineers therefore considered no area inaccessible to them.
