Fall thunderstorms turned unpaved Main Street in Fort Worth into a sea of mud. It’s 1876. Passengers arriving on the brand new Texas & Pacific Railway line have a decision to make: How to get from the tiny depot to “downtown” Fort Worth – located between the Public Square (where the courthouse burned in April) and Third Street.

It’s almost a mile, so wading through the mud is not appealing. A few citizens – the Uber or Lyft drivers of their day – operate a jitney service running horse-pulled wagons back and forth, but they’re full up. Why isn’t there a streetcar?

Fort Worth citizens wondered the same thing and decided to act. A street railway system chartered for Fort Worth by John Peter Smith, K. M. Van Zandt, Zane Cetti, and other leaders in July 1874, went nowhere. It wasn’t until 1876 – when the Texas & Pacific Railway arrived creating demand – that the Fort Worth Street Railway was chartered with Van Zandt as president, creating the city’s first urban transit system.

Construction started in September 1876. After the usual delays and squabbles, regular service, provided by a single mule-drawn car, began in mid-January, 1877. Almost immediately, one of the mules failed to stop and dumped its passengers in a 3-foot ditch. Progress was steady after that and, by February 1877, the main complaint was that the streetcar was always in the wrong end of town from where you needed to catch it.

Service increased, and by 1879 cars were running up and down Main Street every five minutes. By the 1880s, new streetcar companies with charming names like “Queen City” (which ran down Houston Street), “Lake Park,” and “Rosedale” sprang up to provide service to rapidly growing parts of the city. The largest was still the Fort Worth Street Railway, which in 1885 ran on seven miles of track.

Uphill routes were hard on the mules, but newfangled electricity could power streetcars. By 1889, Fort Worth had 32 miles of street railway line. Regular electric service running downtown began on Aug. 2, 1889, with plans to convert the rest of the lines quickly. The electric streetcar did short out the city’s fire alarm system on Aug. 5, and a mistaken rumor spread that you could be electrocuted if you stepped on an electric streetcar rail – but overall, this was progress. New electric routes were also planned for the North Side and West Side (Arlington Heights). The fare was still 5 cents for electric-powered service, without the mule smell.

Streetcar routes expanded rapidly during the 1890s and the early years of the twentieth century, facilitating the explosive growth of Fort Worth’s streetcar suburbs. Quick and efficient service made it possible for a worker to live several miles from downtown and still make it to work on time. The South Side benefited most from streetcars – there was a line serving Mistletoe Heights during the early 1890s, and service on South Main to Hattie Street began in 1897. By 1905, you could live in a home in the heart of the South Side and take the streetcar to town – via College, Hemphill, or Eighth Avenue/Fairmount.

Streetcar conductor Frank Pierce, on the steps, with an unidentified motorman – or driver – in a residential area of Fort Worth about 1904-1906.
Courtesy Cook Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU
 

Existing companies bought up new lines, and there were the inevitable squabbles over routes and revenue. In 1901, the Fort Worth Street Railway Company renamed itself the Northern Texas Traction Company. Stone & Webster from Boston, which ran the Interurban that provided service between area cities, bought Northern Texas Traction in 1905. They had money to invest, and parts of the system were aging and needed repairs.

There was, however, an even bigger threat from automobiles and buses. Assembly lines made cars affordable, and sales soared during the 1920s. At first, streetcars promoted their service as a way to avoid parking woes, but the lure of driving wherever you wanted to go won out. By the mid-1920s streetcar companies looking to expand their routes added bus service rather than laying new rails. Fort Worth was one of the first cities to abandon its streetcars, pulling up some lines for scrap during the early 1930s.

It finally abandoned streetcars completely. There was a ceremonial last run down Main Street on Jan. 1, 1939, with a dozen “old time operators” on board. Henry C. Crouch, whose father had also been a street railway motorman, was the official operator, but many of the old timers also took their turn – with the result that at least three men claimed that they had driven the last streetcar.

Except that it wasn’t really the last regularly scheduled streetcar run. Fort Worth Transit Company, which took over Northern Texas Traction in 1938, kept the Riverside line running until mid-June 1939 to preserve their franchise rights. Then, the company quietly pulled the plug. Rail transit disappeared from Fort Worth streets despite a 21st century interest in modern streetcar service.

Carol Roark is an archivist, historian, and author with a special interest in architectural and photographic history who has written several books on Fort Worth history.