Twin Cities Streetcars - The Rise and Fall

Primary Source Set
by Kathleen Huynh, Resource Sharing Specialist - Campus Locations, Minitex

Business and Industry Transportation

Horse cars were the first public transit system in the Twin Cities. In 1872, the St. Paul Street Rail Company began running horse-drawn cars in St. Paul. Three years later, the Minneapolis Street Rail Company began running their own horse-drawn car lines in Minneapolis. Horse car lines were expensive to operate and the odor and health risks posed from the horse manure were a real concern. Both cities began looking to update their transit systems in the 1880s.

Minneapolis and St. Paul started investing in cable or electric street cars. The St. Paul Street Rail Company began running the first cable car line in 1888, with a second line opening a year later. In 1889, the Minneapolis Street Rail Company purchased material to build six cable car lines, but the lines were never built. That same year, the Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution to convert Fourth Avenue's horse car line into an electric line. The line was such a success that the Minneapolis company decided to build the electric car lines rather than the cable car lines. 

In 1891, Thomas Lowry, who controlled both the Minneapolis and St. Paul Street Rail Companies merged the two creating the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT). The company successfully converted all horse car lines in Minneapolis and St. Paul and the two cable car lines in St. Paul, to electric car lines. The company continued to build new lines at a steady rate. This electric car system became one of the finest public transportation systems in the nation.

At its height in the early 1920s, the TCRT operated more than 900 streetcars, had 523 miles of track in the Twin Cities and surrounding metro, and carried over 200 million passengers a year. The company even had a fleet of steamboats, called Express Boats, that crossed Lake Minnetonka and connected passengers with streetcars. The Express Boats operated from 1906 to 1926. The company, for a brief time, even owned the Big Island Amusement Park and Lake Park Hotel on Lake Minnetonka, and the Wildwood Amusement Park on White Bear Lake.

Their downturn began shortly after their peak with the mass production of automobiles in the 1920s. Ridership fell 48 percent from 1920 to 1932. The Great Depression worked for and against the company. Several lines had to close including the long suburban lines to Lake Minnetonka, White Bear Lake, Stillwater and Anoka, as well as a few city routes. On the plus side for the company, the Depression stopped suburban development and automobiles were neither affordable nor available. 

A surge of riders occurred during WWII due to tire and gas rations, and women began to be hired as "motorettes" to replace the motormen called to military service. This surge continued until the early 1950s. Automobiles were on the rise again along with suburbanization. People were moving out to the suburbs and the vehicle became the easiest way to get around. Along with that, new management took over the company in 1949. They began replacing streetcar lines with buses, which were cheaper to operate. The last streetcar made a final ceremonial run in Minneapolis on June 19, 1954.