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| Charlotte's
streetcars were first powered by mules and
horses! |
Charlotte
Trolley was founded in 1988, and began operating
Charlotte’s electric streetcars again in
1996. But streetcars in Charlotte have a much
longer history than that. In fact, they were an
integral part of Charlotte’s development
over one hundred years ago.
Charlotte’s first public transit system was
managed by the Charlotte Street Railway Company,
chartered in 1883 to develop and operate a streetcar
line. The company laid track along West Trade
and Tryon Streets, and in January 1887, three
cars were put into operation, each drawn by two
mules. Charlotte considered itself the epitome
of the modern city, and the system prospered immediately.
Horses
replaced mules within the first year, and by 1891,
the system included four lines of track. Then
as now, the crossing of Trade and Tryon Streets
at Independence Square was the focus of the "uptown"
business district. The streetcar system had six
cars, 20 horses, and 40 sets of harness, the fare
was five cents, and ridership grew steadily.
Management
of the Charlotte Street Railway Company did have
its day-to-day problems. In 1887, a teenager weighing
447 lbs, on his way to be an exhibit at a local
fair, crashed through the floor of a streetcar,
causing serious damage to the car (we don’t
know what happened to the boy!). And in 1888,
disaster was narrowly averted when the horses
pulling a streetcar bolted from their stop on
West Trade and hurtled all the way to the Square,
dragging the empty car behind them. Fortunately,
no one was hurt, but it must have been a sight
to see.
Exciting as they
were, horse-drawn streetcars didn’t last
long in Charlotte. By 1891, the power of electricity
had captured the popular imagination, and local
entrepreneur Edward Dilworth Latta saw the possibilities
for an electric streetcar line.
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| Double-ended
convertible car. |
Latta
was an acquaintance of Thomas Edison, and when
Latta’s Charlotte Consolidated Construction
Company, known as the Four C’s, took over
the streetcar system in 1891, he immediately began
plans to electrify it. The Edison Electric Company
built the new system, and the first electric streetcar
made a ceremonial inaugural run on May 18, 1891.
Trolley employees worked six days per week, twelve
hours per day. The motormen and conductors were
paid 8 cents per hour during the first two years
of service, 11 cents during the third year, and
12 cents thereafter. These wages were actually
better than those of North Carolina's male textile
workers, who made between 40 and 50 cents per
day in the 1890s.
In 1896 the Charlotte Electric Railway, Light
& Power Co. acquired the system from the Charlotte
Street Railway Company; by 1910, Charlotte Electric
Railway reported owning 19 closed and 11 open
cars which were operated over 21 miles of routes
with seven miles of second track. Thatyear the
Southern Public Utilities Co. (SPU) bought the
system. SPU eventually became Duke Power Company,
which owned and operated Charlotte’s public
transit system for the next 41 years.
Between 1920 and 1930, Char-lotte’s population
went from 46,000 to 83,000, as the textile industry
continued to grow and the city expanded by taking
in surrounding territory. By the time of the Great
Depression, this greatly-increased population
still depended on the same few miles of streetcar
lines plus a fleet of independently owned and
unregulated taxicabs charging a flat fare of ten
cents. Finally, the public, supported by the City
Council, began to demand more of the city’s
transit system, and Duke Power made the decision
to transition from electric streetcars to buses.
On September 7, 1935, the first bus line was instituted,
and the last day of streetcar service was March
14, 1938.
Although
Charlotte’s original streetcar tracks ran
down the center of the main roads and streets
of the city, today Charlotte Trolley rides on
a set of railroad tracks originally laid in 1852
for the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad,
which ran from Charlotte to Columbia and then
on to Charleston, South Carolina. Financed by
Charlotte businessmen, this line was the first
railroad track to arrive in Charlotte. The building
of this railroad has been called the single most
important event in Charlotte's economic history.
It served as a vital railroad connection during
the Civil War, and later played a critical part
in the creation of Charlotte’s textile industry
boom of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
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The tracks have recently been purchased from Norfolk
Southern Railroad by the Charlotte Area Transit
System, for use by both the trolley and a soon-to-be-built
light rail transit line. The
first miles of the trolley route parallel Camden
Road, one of the oldest roads in Mecklenburg Countyamed
because it led to Camden, South Carolina, it was
this road along which General Charles Cornwallis
and the British Army moved when they occupied
Charlotte during the Revolutionary War.
Many thanks to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Historic Landmarks Commission for the historical
information included above.
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