THE END OF THE LINE

AM HODGES, a longtime motorman and conductor for the Phoenix Street Railway, had plenty of memories of the trolley system that once extended across much of the city. "By the 1920s, the track was in pretty bad shape," he recalled in the 1970s. "Jess Fleming was my motorman one time on Washington Street. We was comin' east with the old pull-back brake, and right in front of the library, [the car] quit the track and went clear over to the north curb of the street. I said, 'Hey, Jess, where the hell are ya goin'?' He laughed and said, 'I don't know.' The track just spread and the car just jumped off. They had to bring another car out there and pull us back on the track."

It's hard to imagine now, but from 1887 to 1948, trolleys carried passengers around a city dramatically different from the Phoenix we know today. First pulled by mules and later electrified, the Phoenix Street Railway played an essential role in a place where screened-in sleeping porches preceded the arrival of air conditioning and haze from mesquite fires settled over neighborhoods in winter.

"Large shade trees lined the streets, and residents not only knew their neighbors but conversed with them on a regular basis," wrote Lawrence J. Fleming, the author of the 1977 book Ride a Mile and Smile the While, the definitive history of the Phoenix trolley system. "Streetcars had their shortcomings, for they were noisy, hot in the summer, cold in the winter, sometimes had flat wheels and the ride could be rough. They did, however, run every 10 minutes, go anywhere worth going in their day, and for only 5 cents."

Now, the only trace of the original trolley system is a small museum on Grand Avenue, down which a streetcar line to the Arizona State Fairgrounds once ran. And that museum is raising money to create an impressive showcase of a mostly forgotten part of Arizona history.

HE PHOENIX STREET RAILWAY got its

A start thanks to Moses Hazeltine Sherman, a land developer who obtained financing for the enterprise in the mid-1880s. Economic woes in Los Angeles, which had been planning its own trolley system, enabled Sherman to buy abandoned railway materials from that city for use in Phoenix. The first car arrived in late 1887, and regular service up and down Washington Street began soon after.

In the early days, the streetcars were open on the sides and were pulled by mules on tracks laid atop dirt streets. “In the center of the track, mules with forlorn looks plodded dutifully back and forth, creating a bed of dust in some places up to 6 inches deep,” Fleming wrote. “One can only imagine the mud a summer Arizona thundershower could produce from such raw material.” Later, horses were used instead of mules. The system had grown to five cars and 8 miles of track by 1892, and over the next two decades, electric cars replaced the horse-drawn versions. By 1909, the Washington Street line ran from 23rd Avenue to 16th Street, while other lines extended up Grand Avenue to the fairgrounds and up Third Street to the Phoenix Indian School. Two years later, the latter route was further extended to Glendale; extensions to Mesa, Tempe and Scottsdale were planned but never built.

The growth of the railway wasn't without setbacks. In 1907, the system's parent company paid a $350 settlement when a broken trolley line electrocuted a team of horses. And in 1910, a fire leveled the railway's car barn at 14th and Washington streets, destroying five cars and several thousand dollars' worth of ties. “Manager S.H. Mitchell ... implored the crowd to aid him in saving as many ties as possible,” an Arizona Gazette story recounts. “He offered any price for laborers. About 30 fell to work moving the ties to a place of safety.” The hardships extended to the railway's employees, who at one time earned 25 cents an hour and worked 12to 14-hour days - in line with the practices of the time, but unjust by modern standards. There was no paid time off or sick leave, although each employee did receive a large sack of oranges every Christmas. A 1913 labor dispute led to a strike, but it was resolved by the next year.

“No matter how you looked at it, it was, to quote an early conductor, 'damn hard work,'” Fleming wrote. “It was standing 10 hours or more per day, pulling or turning hand brakes, changing trolleys, collecting fares, jumping on and off cars to open and close switches, and being hot in the summer and cold in the winter. About the only plus factor was that each man was allowed all the fresh air he could use.” Hodges, the motorman and conductor, recounted the lighter side of the job in a cadence reminiscent of Grampa Simpson talking about the time he caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. “Some of the other cars had long brake handles on them,” he said. “If you'd pull them all the way back and a lady was stan-din' there behind ya, you was liable to take the dress up with ya. I did do that a few times, not on purpose, of course. I never looked back, though, because the rules were very strict you had to be looking ahead all the time.” By 1916, the Phoenix Street Railway had reached its point of greatest expansion. Multiple lines ran north from the main line on Washington, which had been extended east to the area of the State Asylum for the Insane (later the Arizona State Hospital). The Glendale line proved unprofitable but was popular among trolley patrons, Fleming wrote: “Hundreds of Phoenicians would picnic at points along the line. Young men would court their true loves on moonlight trolley rides. Auction sales of real property at various places along the line would draw large crowds, if not many purchasers. On such occasions, the developer would pay the fare for special tickets, one way only.” But problems soon began to pile up literally, in some cases: As automobile traffic increased during and after World War I, car-trolley collisions became more common. For reasons that remain unclear, injuries by passengers getting on and off trolley cars increased as well. But many of the railway's woes stemmed from corners cut early on, when the system was created mainly as a tool for real estate promotion. Poorly constructed rails were corroding, and ties were badly rotted.

TO THE NATATORIм.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Motorman Wesley Wenner, who was No. 1 in seniority at the railway, poses for a portrait. Today, the Phoenix Trolley Museum features a mural of Wenner. WILLIAM SCOTT LEFT: The city's first streetcar, which was pulled by mules, is shown in late 1887, shortly after service began.

ARIZONA PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATES

ARIZONA PIONEER HISTORICAL SOCIETY

And at one point in 1919, three cars were taken out of service because baling wire had been used in place of blown fuses.

The challenges continued until 1925, when Sherman and his company walked away from the deteriorating railway system. The city of Phoenix bought the enterprise and embarked on a massive rehabilitation project that included rebuilt tracks and 18 new trolley cars. The Glendale line was abandoned, but the rest of the system saw increased ridership and healthy profits in the late 1920s. In 1929, more than 6 million passengers rode the rails. But that year also brought the stock market crash and the start of the Great Depression, leading to a decline in passengers and revenue. The end of the line was in sight.

Most of the routes continued to operate into the 1940s, but buses gradually began to replace the trolleys. World War II gave the system a reprieve as American cities were directed to use all available streetcar lines to save gas and tires. By 1947, though, buses had supplanted trolleys on the Indian School line, leaving only the original line along Washington still operating.

But that route's days were numbered, too. In August 1947, another car barn fire destroyed most of the trolley fleet, spar-ing only the six cars that were out on the line that day. Investigators blamed a short in one car's controller, but a theory that someone from General Motors set the fire to get Phoenix out of the trolley business persists even today.

Regardless, the loss was too much to bear. The Phoenix Street Railway made its last run in February 1948, with city pioneers and dignitaries boarding three trolleys for a ride to the state Capitol and back. Buses and automobiles had rendered the streetcars obsolete, and while Mayor Ray Busey said he was proud of that aspect of the city's progress, he also noted "a catch in the heart" as the trolleys rolled into retirement.

IT'S POSSIBLE that a few grooves in city streets endure as reminders of the streetcar system, but the Phoenix Trolley Museum, sandwiched between a salvage shop and an art studio on Grand Avenue just northwest of downtown, is much easier to find. Incorporated as the Arizona Street Railway Museum in 1977 by Fleming and two other founders, the museum once occupied a larger space next to Margaret T. Hance Park, on land originally owned by the state and later transferred to the city. Redevelopment led to the facility losing its lease at the end of 2017 and moving to a new home.

The museum now hopes to re-establish itself by once again displaying its centerpiece: Car 116, a 40-foot trolley that was built in 1928 and was one of the six cars not destroyed in the 1947 fire. After finding it being used as a rental unit in Phoenix, the museum acquired it and has spent decades restoring it. An ongoing fundraising effort seeks to return Car 116 and Car 504, another salvaged trolley, to public view at the new museum.

In the meantime, visitors can stop by the museum every Saturday from October through May to see exhibits and trolley paraphernalia, including one of the cars' reversible seats. A new mural out front depicts motorman Wesley Wenner, who was No. 1 in seniority at the railway. Recent construction in downtown Phoenix unearthed trolley tracks from the early 1900s; in late 2021, those rails were extracted and added to the museum's collection. And Michael Swaine, vice president of the museum, says another priority has been recording interviews with people who rode the trolleys, to ensure that their memories are preserved.

But it's not as if rail travel is entirely unfamiliar to today's Phoenicians. The Valley Metro light rail line, inaugurated in 2008, now connects downtown Phoenix with city destinations to the north and Tempe and Mesa to the east. And work continues on the Tempe Streetcar, billed as the Valley of the Sun's first modern streetcar line, with an opening planned for this spring — meaning that soon, trolleys, or at least their present-day counterparts, will be on the streets of the Phoenix area again.