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While many of us believe that Sacramento’s light rail trains were innovative when they began tooting their way throughout the Capital Region in the 1980s, the current system is actually the reboot of a suburban trolley that slid, wended and awoke its way through the area many decades before. 

You could summarize Sacramento’s history with local train travel by citing the century-old kid-lit classic, “The Little Engine That Could.” Its theme is the very essence of self-determination: If you believe you can do something, and you work hard, you’ll succeed. The title character keeps reminding itself as it tows a heavy load of cars up a hillside, “I think I can, I think I can.”

Unfortunately, Sacramento’s once-beloved trolley cars proved to be the engines that ultimately couldn’t. They were phased out to make more room for wider streets and bigger cars. But for roughly 57 years, starting in 1890, streetcars took Sacramentans to and from downtown and what were called the “streetcar suburbs,” with Oak Park being an initial destination and departure point. An “interurban line” ran between Stockton Boulevard and what was then called Sacramento Boulevard before its rechristening as Broadway. 

And those were just the electric streetcars. At first, Sacramento trolleys were essentially horse-drawn carriages with aspirational branding. In 1858, they were called “omnibuses” and took riders to and from the once moribund, now hot R Street corridor to what was not yet Old Sacramento — specifically, the Sacramento riverfront. 

It took another 12 years for the first streetcars, still horse-drawn, to be pulled along on dirt streets through downtown Sacramento on rail lines. But by 1890, overhead power lines had been built: Enter the first electric trolleys and, by 1906, Pacific Gas & Electric’s dominance as the town’s principal streetcar company. 

Traveling by streetcar was a pretty good deal back then, even in early 1900s dollars. It cost you five cents — which would still be only $1.88 in today’s currency — to ride the car, presumably for as long as you wanted. Yet, according to author and Sacramento historian William Burg — who’s written seven books about the Capital City’s rosy past, including “Sacramento’s Streetcars” — “By the time of the Great Depression, you could buy a loaf of bread for your family for a nickel or ride the streetcar.” He pauses for emphasis. “Which do you think most people chose to do?”

Incidentally, those fares increased (by two cents!) as new metal streetcars were introduced to the area in 1929 — the very year the stock market imploded.

Asked if she’s old enough to recall the Sacramento streetcar heyday, retired attorney and native Sacramentan Rosemary Kelly, who’s 87, says she remembered it existing “for a short period of time. The streetcar ran along 24th Street, and my dad took it downtown to work. It was slow and it swayed, but it was fun to take. It doesn’t seem as if it was long before buses replaced it. Maybe it was when the war ended.”
That incursion had actually begun in the 1930s, when rubber-tired buses began to be a preferred mode of travel for some and ownership of private cars seemed to multiply almost exponentially. By 1947, the last streetcar was retired.

Author and historian Burg says that before the phasing out of the local trolleys, local trains took people to their jobs and future. “The trolleys kind of sold the 20th-century lifestyle before the century even arrived,” he says. “It would transport you to a place where you could buy the land on which you’d build your house and take you to and from the job you had downtown,” he says. “You wouldn’t think of building a home in the suburbs unless you knew you could get there. And when the trolley started, there weren’t any automobiles.” 

Not surprisingly, the land and trolley were often owned by the same company, which also owned the area’s electricity grid (these were the early days of PG&E). Burg, who’s 55, has been a historian for 17 years. In addition to his state government post in the Office of Historic Preservation, he’s president of the nonprofit Preservation Sacramento, which used to be known as the Sacramento Old City Association. 

Sacramento wasn’t the only U.S. city that endured the double-metamorphosis, (trolleys to cars to trolleys). If you ever have the chance to see the 1988 film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” you’ll discover that underlying the visual delights of this cartoon and live-action comedy is the story of how a trolley-car system similar to the capital’s — the Pacific Electric Red Car and Los Angeles Railway Yellow Car line — was scrapped in deference to automobile manufacturers and freeway builders anxious to create the megalithic chaos of air and noise pollution, traffic congestion and gridlock that became modern Los Angeles — and most of the surrounding signage-challenged, freeway-dominated cities and counties of Southern California. 

Now, like Sacramento, L.A. again has local trains. Since starting service nearly 35 years ago, Metro Rail enjoys a ridership of approximately 208,300 per weekday; Sacramento Light Rail, which started service in 1987, has about 22,000 riders. Both of those numbers are likely to grow in the next few years as people return to brick-and-wall workplaces that aren’t their own homes, and parking rates and gas prices continue to climb. Track to the future, anyone?  

Do you know of any unique history, events, people or places for us to share in The Back Story? Email us at editorial@comstocksmag.com.