Trolley Thursday 8/5/21 - The San Diego Electric Railway

Welcome to another month of streetcar history and stories on Twice-Weekly Trolley History! For this month, we'll be focusing on the ongoing story of San Diego's streetcars, starting with the original San Diego Electric Railway, or SDERy. San Diego has always been thought of as one of America's "World Class cities", as it was usually the first city encountered by northbound ships coming out the west side of the Panama Canal, and by the early 20th century it had already established itself as a major hub of ferry traffic, fish, lumber, and shipbuilding, to say nothing of its economic promise or its beach tourism traffic fueled by hoteliers and land development. In order for San Diego to become a "City in Motion", though, it needed the momentum of streetcars to make it America's Finest City. On today's Trolley Thursday, let's look back on the history of this legendary system and how it's set up America's current light rail craze.

  

Horsecars in the Gaslamp Quarter

A horsecar on the Fifth Street and University Heights Line.
(San Diego History Center)

A San Diego Horsecar in 1911, representing an antiquated form of travel
in the groundbreaking parade for the Panama-California Exposition Center.
(San Diego history Center)

Our story begins on July 3, 1886, when the San Diego Street Car Company (SDSCC) was founded by major local investors Hampton L. Story (1835-1925, of the Story & Clark Piano Company) and Elisha S. Babcock (1848-1922, originally from the Bell Telephone Company). Story and Babcock's new line was modest, going up 5th Avenue in what is now San Diego's "Gaslamp Quarter", the historic center of the city. Horsecars did not last long in San Diego, and indeed its importance was waning to Story and Babcock, as they were busier developing Coronado Island and building the famous Hotel Del Coronado. However, it is thanks to the SDSCC's single line that San Diego got its footing in rapid transit and set the stage for the lines to follow.

Take My Trolley to Old Town Road

An early electric streetcar of the San Diego & Old Town
Street Railway, using a "troller" instead of a trolley pole.
(San Diego History Center)

On the other side of the country, inventor Frank J. Sprague had perfected the first functional electric streetcar by late 1887 in Virginia, and it did not take long for the same idea to take hold in the West Coast. San Diego became the first western American city with electric streetcar service on November 9, 1887, when a streetcar began running up Broadway Boulevard between Kettner to the South and "Old Town San Diego" to the north. This little test train eventually became the basis for the San Diego & Old Town Street Railway (SD&OT), where its use of the "ground return" system (where electricity was delivered by wire and returned by rail, a light rail standard today) made it the most state-of-the-art electric railway on the Pacific Coast. (That is, until the advent of other railways like the Pacific Electric, the Key System, and others discussed on this blog.)

A rather fanciful San Diego cable car, based on the Powell St. cars
in San Francisco. The "Bombay" roof suggests this is a Mahoney Bros. car.
(San Diego History Center)

However, the appearance of the SD&OT spurred other competitors to open in very short time. The Electric Rapid Transit Company was organized in 1888 to attempt regular operation of streetcars in San Diego, but the capital was never raised and, thus, it never opened. The San Diego Cable Railway (SDCR), the city's only cable car, was formed in July 1889 to take over the failed rapid transit company, with the first cable cars running on June 7, 1890. The SDCR also introduced trolley-park service to Mission Cliff Gardens, one of the first public recreation areas in San Diego, overlooking Mission Valley (now the interchange of the CA-163 and Interstate 8 freeways). 

A postcard view of the long-gone Mission Cliff Gardens.
(Hidden San Diego)

The Hotel Del Coronado in the 1920s, with a
"Class 1 Exposition" car headed for the grand hotel.
(San Diego History Center)

By the 1890s, several other street railway companies (including the Park Belt Line and the Ocean Beach Railroad) vied for local competition on varying gauges with varying sources of propulsion. The Hotel Del Coronado opened on February 19, 1888, and the opening was so momentous that ridership across the companies soared as people crowded ferry-bound streetcars to experience the majesty of their new hotel. As the people celebrated San Diego's new luxury hotel, figures in the background began formulating a plan to consolidate and streamline the city's rapid transit system under one banner, and one man hoped to make it all possible.

Sugar-Coated Consolidation

John D. Spreckels in 1901.
(Schumacher Portraits)

The yacht, "Lurline"
(UCSD Libraries)

John D. Spreckels (1853-1926) has often been mentioned in passing on this blog before, but this is the first time we actually get to look at the man up close. The son of famous "Sugar King" Claus Spreckels and the eldest of five children, John got his start managing his father's sugar operations in Hawaii before setting up his own shipping company in 1880, J.D. Spreckels & Brother, to more efficiently deliver goods and passengers across the Pacific Ocean. In 1887, Spreckels first visited the still-developing San Diego on his yacht "Lurline" and invested in a wharf and coal-bunkers on "D" Street (later Broadway). It was his money that also saved the Hotel Del Coronado from languishing in development hell, as he and his business partners ponied up $100,000 (or $2.7 million today) for Babcock and Story to complete the hotel. After it opened, he bought out Babcock and Story's ownership to make the Coronado Beach Company to manage both the hotel and development on Coronado Island.

SDERy No. 1 at 5th and Market on its inaugural run, September 21, 1892.
(San Diego History Center)

On November 30, 1891, after Spreckels had grown so in love with San Diego that he firmly entrenched himself in the city, he incorporated the San Diego Electric Railway Company (SDERy) to begin buying out and standardizing the city's railways. The first railway to purchase was the SDSCC, which he purchased from Babcock and Story for $115,000 (or $4.4 million today) and intended to finally end the outdated horsecar operations. After all, who needs antiquated horsecars in America's Finest City? After the horsecars ended, the tracks were widened and wires were strung up in much the same fashion as the SD&OT, with the first electric streetcars being ordered from J.G. Brill later that year (more detail on them next week). On September 21, 1892, the SDERy opened to massive acclaim with the first electric double-decker streetcar in the United States, setting the wheels of progress into motion. This progress later caught the SDCR in its tracks by October of that year, as after an earlier bankruptcy the company quietly folded.

A covered cable car of the Citizens Traction Company, 1890s.
(San Diego History Center)

However, the SDERy did not get the assets of the SDCR that easily. Instead, a new company called the Citizens Traction Company (CTC) was formed in August 1895 to both convert the SDCR into an electric line and compete against the SDERy in a psuedo-municipal railway. The converted cable railway was just 4.7 miles long when it opened for business on July 28, 1896, and it seemed nothing much else was done with the railway as, by February 12, 1897, the CTC encountered financial difficulties and went into receivership. Babcock, as an agent for Spreckels and the SDERy, formally purchased the CTC and all of its infrastructure and assets on March 23, 1898 for a cheap $19,000 ($600,000 today). Spreckels had his engineers regauge the line from 3'6" Cape gauge to 4'8.5" standard gauge and added it to the growing SDERy, which at this point also bought the Park Belt Line, Ocean Beach Railroad, and the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway, a heavy-rail motorcar line. 

The McKeen car of the LA&SDB races an early open summer car in 1907.
(SDERA)

Life in Spreckels' San Diego

A map of the San Diego Electric Railway at its height in 1918, which can be purchased here.
(Fifty-Three Studio)

The Egyptian Revival substation of the later Mission Beach
streetcar line, located at bacon Street and West Point Loma, 1925.
(Point Loma-OB Monthly)

By the turn of the century, the SDERy was fast expanding from its original five-line system (the Fifth Street & Logan Heights, the First and "D" Streets, the Depot Line, the Ferry Line, and the K Street Shuttle) and this put Spreckels' trolleys at a major power disadvantage. The first major expansion of the SDERy was actually to remedy this issue, as by 1905 a new power generating plant was opened up to provide more 600V DC power to the system. This was later helped along by another power generating plant on Kettner Boulevard and "E" Street in 1911. At this point, new lines were organized into operating divisions, with the first five lines falling under one operating division. The next one to open, the Imperial Avenue Division, built out of downtown and covered the Imperial Avenue Line from the cemeteries on the eastern city limits to Fifth and Market Street. Later divisions were added as new lines opened.

The SDERy Carbarn at 15th and Imperial Avenue.
(San Diego History Center)

The San Diego & Arizona Railway is a whole other
kettle of fish to go into, one where this blog will see no service.
Do look it up on your own time.
(Pacific Southwest Railway Museum)

However, much of the early 1900s-1910s were spent with Spreckels showing increasing (and some would say unneeded and unwarranted) influence in San Diego. After announcing his bid to build the San Diego & Arizona Railway between San Diego and El Centro (a border town with Mexico) in 1906, Spreckels had the Third Avenue Streetcar line extended to his owned properties in Mission Hills, using the SDERy as a real estate scheme. He also forced a ballot initiative in 1910 to have the city give him a lease extension of at least 25 years to secure the growth of his electric railway and, in doing so, also generate the capital needed to build his "Impossible Railway". This expansion put him at odds with the local population that appreciated San Diego's growth, but left no other options for outside growth due to limited rail and ship travel at the time. This anxiety about San Diego's stagnation, and the popular opinion of Spreckels running San Diego without the will of the people, attracted the unwanted attention of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a labor rights group popularly known as the "Wobblies".

Police and firefighters clear IWW protestors and supporters from a public square, 1912.
(Libcom.org)

One of the many logos fronted by the "Wobblies".
(IWW.org)

To the IWW, Spreckels was the evils of capitalism incarnate, as he had turned San Diego into a glorified fiefdom from his mansion at 1630 Glorietta Boulevard, and its international harbor wasn't generating the development people wanted. When Spreckels had the opportunity to build and dredge a new pier, new workers flooded into San Diego, and this too brought the attention of the infamous IWW. Representatives of the group were eager to convert new workers into supporters of their cause, and Spreckels wasted no time denigrating them in his newspapers, decrying in an edition of the San Diego Union:

"The little flags which the citizens of San Diego are wearing are outward evidence of the determination that treason shall never again be tolerated in San Diego, by word of foul mouths or by the flaunting red rag of anarchy."

Unfortunately for him, anarchy did reign in San Diego, leading the San Diego Common Council to pass Ordinance No. 4623 which reduced street proselytizing down to a small section of 49 square blocks in the middle of San Diego. Anyone caught protesting outside this area was subject to a $25 or $100 fine and/or thirty days of imprisonment. The IWW responded to this action, clearly influenced by Spreckels' money, as a way to make a stand and thus not only fought back but allowed themselves to fill up every jail in the city and waste as much city money and time as possible with police brutality affecting many IWW members. By the end of the big clash in the fall of 1912, the Wobblies fled San Diego. Shaken by his run-in with the Wobblies, John D. Spreckels decided to keep his own head down and focus his investments outside of San Diego instead. After all, he had a party to plan, and he didn't want to be remembered as just a cruel capitalist.

The epic Cabrillo Bridge to Balboa Park that carries El Prado Road.
(San Diego History Center)

  

The Biggest Party in San Diego Harbor

A guide book to the 1915 Panama-California Exposition.
(Public Domain)

Part of the drama that made up the backdrop of the 1912 Free Speech Fight was the planned 1915 "Panama-California Exposition". With the end of construction on the Panama Canal in sight, San Diego's Chamber of Commerce thought that a massive "world's fair" would be a way to buck the city's isolationist exoticism. John D. Spreckels served as vice-president of the Exposition Committee and contributed several of the Exposition's attractions, including the famous Organ Pavilion. Immediately, though, the exposition was thrown into disarray as many prominent politicians chose to support San Francisco's much larger "Panama-Pacific International Exposition". San Diego, of course, chose to ignore the Bay Area's pleas for them to stop with this and began planning a massive complex in Balboa Park to house all of the exposition buildings.

For the SDERy, they prepared for the exposition by constructing a new carbarn at Adams Avenue and Florida Street in 1913. Two years later, right as the Panama-California Exposition opened, the Adams Avenue Division came online with a line from F and Third Streets to Normal heights in the northeast, with one line going right through Balboa Park via B Street and Park Boulevard. To get all of the people to the Exposition, 101 brand-new streetcars were ordered from St. Louis Car Company to replace the antiquated single-truck and "California" cars originally running the almost-100 miles of track through the city. 

The Arts-and-Crafts-inspired San Diego Class 1 "Exposition" cars.
(San Diego History Center)

A Class 1 "Exposition" car navigates the flood waters at
13th and M Streets, 1916.
(San Diego History Center))

Despite the success of the Exposition, disaster soon struck one year into the massive exposition. In 1916, the "Great Flood of San Diego" struck after a long dry period and destroyed much of the outer-lying lines of the SDERy. Due to World War I affecting steel supplies around the country, the cost to repair the damages was far too great for Spreckels to bear and the SDERy began losing ridership to jitney buses and private automobiles. Three years after this, in 1919, Spreckels was able to complete his "Impossible Railway", the San Diego & Arizona with a golden spike ceremony after 13 years of construction. To offset the cost of building this troubled railway, Spreckels began closing down several SDERy lines (most of them damaged by the flood) and sold his power generating plants to the Consolidated Gas & Electric Company. Further costs were offset by converting the existing streetcar fleet into "one-man" cars.

Wartime Boomtown

The first motor coach, dubbed "Number 1", announces
new bus service between National City and Chula Vista
for the San Diego Electric Railway.
(California History Room)

The 1920s were almost unkind to the SDERy prior to the advent of World War II. In this time, the last major expansion happened with an extension to Mission Beach and Pacific Beach at a cost of $3.3 million dollars ($51 million today) with new rails, terminals, substations, and streetcars. The line opened in 1925, and while it had the benefit of taking San Diegans out to the beach or the local boardwalk, it wasn't enough to stem the rise of buses. In 1921, the first motor bus between National City and Chula Vista began operating a regular service and, following Spreckels' retirement and death in 1926, it didn't take long for the SDERy to start its own bus service to compete. By 1930, buses had fully taken over the old Ocean Beach and La Jolla services from streetcars and despite the opening of the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition in Balboa Park expected to bring in hundreds of people into the city, no thought was put into further expansion of the transit services.

Two streetcars meet at Roseville Junction on the SDERy Mission Beach line, 1923.
(San Diego History Center)

PCC No. 528 poses, like new, at the Adams Avenue Carbarn.
(Ralph Cantos)

The next year, the SDERy finally decided to hunker down and purchase 25 new streetcars from the St. Louis Car Company. This was the famous Presidents Conference Committee (PCC) car, and San Diego was the first customer to receive their new streetcars after the first unit built went to Brooklyn. The new cars were cheaper to operate and maintain, which made Spreckels' estate breathe a sigh of financial relief. However, by 1941, World War II was in full swing and San Diego became a major hub of the US Navy. With gas rationing in effect, more emphasis was put on the electric railway with an artificially-inflated ridership of 94 million people and 146 million trips by the end of the war. This meant more substations (including one at the basement of the Spreckels Theater), used transit vehicles from New York City, Salt Lake City, and Wilkes-Barre, and the Mission Beach Line being torn out and replaced with buses for easier transit corridors and lessened gridlock. 

NCL's Death-Spike, Driven Down

Ex-SDERy PCCs find themselves in new territory in El Paso, Texas.
(Trolleyville Times)

One would think the SDERy would be able to ride the tide of increased ridership following World War II with impressive statistics and facts like that, but the hard reality is that immediately after the war, the SDERy decided to close all but three streetcar lines to bus routes in 1946. Spreckels' estate was not only harried by the losses incurred by natural disasters on the SD&A, but also the hemorrhaging ridership on the streetcars, and were looking for a buyer fast. That buyer turned out to be the Western Transit Company (WTC), a division of the infamous National City Lines (NCL) which needs no introduction at this point. The company changed hands on July 27, 1948, and the name was changed to the San Diego Transit System (SDTS) by September 9. 1949 was the final year of streetcar operations for San Diego, as the State Public Utilities Commission granted a motion to discontinue service by March 3 with the final day being April 24, 1949.

PCC no. 507 finds itself hounded by pursuing cars as it races towards Broadway and 39th Street.
(San Diego Metropolitan Transit System)

400 class cars and PCCs rub shoulders along Broadway, late 1940s.
(San Diego Metropolitan Transit System)

Local railroad booster excursions sponsored by the Pacific Railroad Society (PRS) gave the PCC cars their last hurrah through March, but by April 23, the new GM buses had arrived and were here to stay. On April 24, the last streetcar rolled into the Adams Avenue Carbarn at 5:45AM and brought sixty-three years of streetcar service in San Diego to an end. From that point on, San Diego was an all-bus town, and anything resembling the SDERy would not return again until 1981. Twenty-one of San Diego's "new" PCC cars were transferred to another NCL holding, the El Paso International Streetcar, between 1950 and 1952, with the remaining eight going to private owners and preservation groups. The other, older streetcars were unceremoniously burned and scrapped. This ends the story of the San Diego Electric Railway, but it's only the beginning for San Diego's light rail renaissance. 

  

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included "California Trolleys in Color, Volume 1: San Diego & Los Angeles" by P.Allen Copeland, "California's Electric Railways: An Illustrated Review" by Harre W. Demoro, the history pages for the San Diego MTS and San Diego Gas & Electric, the AFT Guild's article commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Free Speech Fights, and the archives of the San Diego History Center, the San Diego Electric Railway Association and the Southern California Railway Museum. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”. On Tuesday, we open up the Adams Street carhouse and look at the many streetcars that called San Diego "home"! For now, 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!