Information Sheet

 

 

R         McAuliffe, Eugene, 1866‑1959.

409                  Photograph album, ca. 1906‑1910.

                                    Two folders.

 

 

 

This is a photograph album of a mining and railway engineer.  The album contains views of the construction of the Panama Canal, ca. 1906‑1910, and a tour of the canal by a group from the American Institute of Mining Engineers, 1910.  Also included are unidentified photo­graphs, pos­si­bly of the Tom­bigbee River, n.d.

 

Eugene McAuliffe, a native of Maidstone, England, began his ca­reer as a shop appren­tice with the Northern Pacific Railway in 1886.  He transferred to locomotive service as an engineer in 1908.  When he left the Northern Pacific, he was foreman of air brake instruction on the line.  McAuliffe went to the Frisco system in 1908 as the chief fuel agent.  It was the beginning of a long association with the coal industry.  From 1908 to 1917, he was also associ­ated with the Bra­zil Block Coal Company, and was a founding member of the International Railway Fuel Associa­tion.  McAuliffe left the railroad industry in 1917 to operate public utili­ties in Missouri, Michi­gan, and Wisconsin, and to serve as an officer of the West Kentucky Coal Company, and the Un­ion Col­liery Company.  In 1918‑1920, he was manager of the United States Railroad Administra­tion Fuel Con­servation Section.  Following World War I, McAuliffe was president of the Union Pacific Coal Company, the Union Pacific Water Com­pany, the Washington Coal Company, and the Southern Wyoming Utilities Company.  McAu­liffe was the author of Railway Fuel (1916), The Romance and Tragedy of Coal (1931), and an historical work on George A. Custer and the Battle of Little Big Horn.  He was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering by the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy (now UM‑Rolla) in 1927.  McAuliffe was elected president of the American Institute of Min­ing and Metallurgical Engineers in 1941.  He retired at Omaha, Ne­braska, where he lived until his death in 1959.

 

McAuliffe’s photograph album was donated by his daughter through the School of Mines and Metallurgy at UM‑Rolla.  The album consists of two sections.  The first section contains views of construction on the Panama Canal, and a second, smaller section includes views ten­ta­tively identi­fied as photographs of the Tombigbee River.  The Panama Canal section in­cludes a set of large, captioned photographs and smaller snapshot views.  The larger photo­graphs were probably ob­tained through the Panama Canal Company, while the snapshots were made by McAuliffe during a tour of the Canal Zone sponsored by the American Institute of Mining Engi­neers in I910.  The tour and its features were described in the Bulletin of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, 1910 and 1911.  The photographs show scenes of Panama City and Colon, American and French equip­ment, construction facilities, and excava­tions in progress at Contrac­tor's Hill, Culebra Cut, and Gatun.  There are also views of the American Institute of Mining En­gineers tour­ing party, and of their vessel, the S.S. Prinz August Wilhelm.

 

The second section includes views of river scenes, barges and other vessels, locks and dock­ing facilities and coal company operations at river­side.  The photographs are undated. They have been tentatively identified by the donor as Tombigbee River scenes.

 

 

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