Trolley Thursday 01-7-21 - The History of Pacific Electric, 1900 to 1911

Despite its status as one of the largest and most well-beloved mass transit systems in America's history, the Pacific Electric Railway was not supposed to be a tool to move people across five different counties in Southern California. It was, instead, a tool to move real estate, as its creators Henry Huntington and Isaias Hellman were into the real estate business instead of the railway business. Nevertheless, Huntington's new trolley attracted plenty of investors and rivals in the early 1900s, with one particular figure eager to take Huntington's new toy for his own. All of this business skullduggery and more on today's Trolley Thursday history of the Pacific Electric!

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...