Trolley Tuesday 1-5-21 - The Pre-History of the Pacific Electric

Welcome to the first Trolley Tuesday post of 2021! We're all glad you've been able to read our blog for the past year, and maybe even on Twitter for the past two years, and my conductor and I want to keep providing informative and entertaining content for however long we can keep this up. 

For this month's streetcar excursion, we're in home territory as I take you through a complete history of the Pacific Electric Railroad, one of the most well-known and iconic streetcar systems... in the world. However, before we can get to the World's Wonderland Lines, we first need to see where these streetcars all came from, and it all started in a little valley next to a wide river with a very, very big problem...

Rivers Don't Make Good Thrones, As You Can Get Wet

An 1869 view of Los Angeles on what is now the "Los Pueblos de Los Angeles" historic monument.
The view is from the Pico House looking north, with the "Old Plaza Church" on what is now Main Street. 
The current "Pueblos" are the big bushel of trees to the right.
(Public Domain)

Originally founded on September 4, 1781 by a group of Spanish Franciscan Friars led by Fra. Junipero Serra, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles (The Town of Our Lady, the Queen of Angels) was positioned at a significant bend in the Porciuncula River (later, Los Angeles River) and served as a large town for both the local Catholic diocese as well as local Spanish populations. After the Mexican-American War, this land was ceded to the United States and began to get a new influx of travellers from both East and West, looking for new opportunities in the American West. By the late 1800s, Los Angeles went from a small "pueblo" into a bustling city with railroad service, stagecoaches, and the need for local transportation. This is where our story begins.

Los Angeles Plays "Polo" With Horsecars

You'd think for a town as large as Los Angeles was by the 1870s (5,728 people), streetcars would be the norm as it was in other cities like New Orleans or New York, both of which had them before the Civil War. However, at the time, Los Angeles was still a very small city with destinations within easy walking distance and the infamous urban sprawl wouldn't be a thing for another 50 years or so. 

An 1880 drawing of the three types of Los Angeles transport going past the Southern Pacific depot.
Seen are an East Los Angeles horsecar, a stage coach, and a Southern Pacific Railroad train.
(Los Angeles Public Library)

In 1873, the first transit system in Los Angeles was established by Charles Dupuy (no relation to the French minister of the same name) as the Pioneer Omnibus Street Line, but this closed two years later due to the state of the muddy roads at the time. Nevertheless, its pioneering design of using small railroad-style cars on wooden wheels with a fixed route between Olvera Street and Washington/Main gave Angelinos and investors each a promise of the mass transit boom to come.

A Main Street & Agricultural Park horsecar along
Main Street in 1884, trundling past the
St. Vibiana's Cathedral on Main Street.
(USC Libraries)

The first actual streetcar arrived on July 1, 1874, when local lawyer Robert M. Widney opened the Spring & Sixth Street Railroad as a horsecar line. The 1.5 mile route sported what was, at the time, modern conveniences like hourly intervals between 6:30AM and 10PM and a hefty 10-cent fare to ride between Temple/Spring Streets and Figueroa via Sixth Street. This was later joined exactly one year later by the Main Street & Agricultural Park Street Railroad, which was a competing service running from the central business district on Main Street to Agricultural Park, then a "haven for gamblers and vice seekers" with a "racetrack, saloon, and brothel." While this is certainly the most unorthodox trolley park to ever exist, we now know it today as "Exposition Park". 

In 1892, a Southern Pacific Depot-bound horsecar
stops outside the old Los Angeles Post Office on Main Street.
(Los Angeles Public Library)

As Los Angeles is known for its suburbs, it's interesting to note that the horsecars did establish two communities before they were replaced in the 1880s. The first was East Los Angeles (also known as Lincoln Heights) across the Los Angeles River, which was served by the Spring & Sixth beginning in 1876. In 1877, Boyle Heights (between downtown and East Los Angeles) became the city's second streetcar suburb when it was served by the Los Angeles & Aliso Avenue Street Passenger Railway. Both companies, of many, enabled their passengers to seek new housing out of the busy downtown, and firmly established the close relationship between street railways and real estate.

The Problem With Cables

As Los Angeles began growing steadily out of its river valley borders, investors were looking to create a better transit system that would both better serve the busy central business districts downtown and entice residents to move up into the hills around LA. In order to climb these hills, cable cars finally came to Los Angeles starting on October 8, 1885. The Second Street Cable Railway was the first of three cable car companies in the city, and based on the patents and designs of Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Hallidie, who designed much of San Francisco's famous cable cars. To Angelinos, the cable cars were much quieter, smoother, and more well-behaved than the horsecars.

In a now-long lost view, a Second Street Cable car is seen about to undertake another arduous climb up from Broadway.
In the distance, the passing loop can be seen as the line gets steeper.
A tunnel has since taken the place of the Second Street Cable, made famous in the film Blade Runner.
(Los Angeles Public Library)

The Second Street Cable reaches the then-undeveloped
west slope of Bunker Hill at Second and Flower, 1885.
(USC Libraries)

The Second Street Line ran from Spring Street up to Bunker Hill, whose land was managed by the Los Angeles Improvement Company. In order to get from Spring Street to Bunker Hill, however, deliberate attempts were made to profile the hills to better sit the cars as between the two locales was a sheer cliff. Even after profiling and cutting, the climb up to Bunker Hill was still a vicious 27-degree slope, but it still attracted plenty of potential residents by advertising: "PURE AIR - NO FOGS - CHEAP LOTS IN THE WESTERN ADDITION OF THE CABLE ROAD". Another interesting thing about the Second Street Cable was unlike most railways, it only had one rail line with a single passing loop, but two cables running underground. Unfortunately, the Second Street Line closed just four years later, after a storm in 1889 buried part of the line in 20 feet of mud. 

The fancy Temple Street Cable Railway's Angelino Heights
powerhouse in 1890, at Temple and East Edgeware Road.
(Los Angeles Public Library)

The second company was the Temple Street Cable Railway, which was established by land speculator Prudent Beaudry, and competed with the Los Angeles Improvement Company for land ownership in Bunker Hill. Beaudry's line helped established Angelino Heights on LA's North Side (now the site of Dodgers Stadium) as another streetcar suburb. While not as big or as steep as the Second Street Cable, the Temple Street Cable was healthy enough to survive a mud flood and last until 1902.

The third and final company was definitely the most extravagant and the most ambitious. Established in 1889, the Los Angeles Cable Railway incorporated two huge viaducts over the Los Angeles River and Southern Pacific's Taylor Yard to reach parts of East Los Angeles (Lincoln Heights) as well as Westlake Park (now MacArthur Park) and Boyle Heights to the West. Its enormous bridge to East LA became a tourist attraction as well as an important piece of infrastructure, and seemed to herald future development of elevated light rail in Los Angeles. However, I'm getting way ahead of myself.

The extravagant Los Angeles Cable Railway Bridge across the Southern Pacific yard to Lincoln Heights.
This area is now the Los Angeles City Park with the elevated segment now revisited as the LA Metro Gold (L) Line route to Union Station.
(Bancroft Library, USC Berkeley)

Despite the new real estate ventures the cable cars were able to reach, there was always one inherent problem about them. Unlike San Francisco, Los Angeles never did grow "up" along the many hills that surrounded the valley, so cable car construction was frequently reaching "out" to these new communities. By the 1890s, investors had realized that the future of urban sprawl lay outside of city limits, and running miles-long cables was too cost prohibitive to undertake. Thus, Los Angeles finally caught up with the rest of the country and began electrification in earnest.

Lightning Strikes the Angels

The Los Angeles Electric Railway's original streetcar, featuring a horsecar pulled by a "Daft Overhead System" streetcar that featured a trolley chassis on a wire running down a cable into the power car.
(USC Digital Library)

Gen. Moses Sherman, namesake of
Sherman Oaks, Sherman Way,
and Sherman (now West Hollywood).
(Public Domain)

Los Angeles had originally tried electric streetcars in 1887, when the Los Angeles Electric Railway was built to serve a new real estate tract on Pico Street. However, a huge explosion at their power station killed any electric railway development in the city until ten years later, when Frank J. Sprague's electric motor and trolley pole were brought to the city by new out-of-town investors led by Gen. Moses Hazeltine Sherman (a familiar name, for sure). Sherman was eager to invest in Los Angeles’ development after vacationing there and championed a scheme to electrify the Second Street Cable. In 1890, the mudslide was removed and the steep grades were bypassed with a tunnel to open the new Belt Line Railroad Company. 

In cooperation with other significant Los Angeles investors such as brother-in-law Eli P. Clark (general manager) and future San Fernando Syndicate bigwig Fred Eaton (chief engineer), Sherman established the Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway Company (LACE) in Arizona in the fall of 1890. The Arizona establishment was due to more lax business laws in the state compared to California, and the "5-block law" passed in Los Angeles around the same time as LACE's establishment (meaning any street railway can use another company's tracks for up to five blocks) helped Sherman and Company scoop up established electric railways as well as set up their own, eventually owning 90% of all streetcar lines in Los Angeles.

A LACE Ry. converted cable car is seen at work, taking people to a baseball game at "Athletic Park"
(SC-ERHA)

However, this rampant purchasing ended up doing the LACE in very quickly. Among other issues, the establishment of the Los Angeles & Pasadena Railway, an interurban line serving the northern town of Pasadena, and the complete purchase of its streetcar lines sent Sherman and Clark into a financial tailspin. The bondholders of the LACE, whose payments were missed in April 1894, overruled Sherman's control of the company and reorganized it as the Los Angeles Railway (LARy) on March 23, 1895, with the Pasadena lines and the interurban spun off. By 1896, the new company had finished electrifying all existing horse and cable car lines to electric.

Mr. Huntington Comes to Town

Henry E. Huntington, railroad royalty of modest moustache.
(Public Domain)

Our pre-history of the Pacific Electric ends in 1898, when Oneonta-native investor and railroad executive Henry E. Huntington arrived in Los Angeles after getting burned on a promised railroad inheritance from his uncle. Wanting to establish himself as a major booster for Los Angeles in this time of rapid expansion, he quickly purchased the Los Angeles Railway from its bondholders and began financing the expansion of the system all over downtown, buying up chunks of real estate for further development. 

However, this was not enough for the upstart tycoon as the 20th Century rolled in. Huntington saw promise outside of Los Angeles' city limits and began planning with banker Isaias W. Hellman (no relation to the Hellman's Bread Brand) to tie together as much of Southern California as he could under his own railway. By 1901, Huntington and Hellman established the Pacific Electric Railroad (PE) and the rest... well, that's a story for another time.

Looking south down Broadway, a wooden Pacific Electric car trundles along in 1905.
(Los Angeles Public Library)

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included two KCET articles about Los Angeles' horsecars and cable cars , a series of articles by the Southern California Electric Railway Historical Society, and the photo collections of the Los Angeles Public Library and the USC Library. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by Brian Clough and can be found on his site, Banks of the Susquehanna. On Thursday, we check out the early history of Pacific Electric, from 1900 to 1911! Until then, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!