Who Tore Up the Tracks? · Episode 15 of 24 · 22 min
The City the Streetcar Built: Sausalito, 1937–1941
Part Two opens by conceding the series' strongest objection: Marin County's Sausalito lost all its passenger rail between 1937 and 1941, fifteen years before the Interstate Highway Act, to a bridge. A public body that had opened the Golden Gate Bridge wanted the ferries and trains gone and got its way. What 1956 added was not the idea but the money.
Who's who
- Frank Sprague+1 more episodeEngineer whose 1888 Richmond system made the streetcar suburb possible
- Henry E. Huntington+1 more episodeBuilt Pacific Electric to sell land, transit as a loss leader
- Sam Bass Warner Jr.+1 more episodeHistorian of Boston's streetcar suburbs
Where it happens
- Sausalito, California+3 more episodesLost all passenger transit between 1937 and 1941
- Golden Gate Bridge, California+1 more episodeOpened May 1937 and competed with ferries and trains
- Mill Valley, CaliforniaDepot for the mountain railway to East Peak
- Mount Tamalpais, California+1 more episodeScenic railway abandoned in 1930; grade became a fire road
- Marinship, SausalitoWartime shipyard employing roughly 20,000 at peak
Timeline
- 1903Marin interurban opens with third-rail electrification
- 1930Mountain railway abandoned; Golden Gate Bridge bond passes
- May 1937Golden Gate Bridge opens
- July 1938Sausalito-Hyde Street ferry ends
- February 1941Last Marin interurban and ferry end the same day
- November 1971Last train leaves Sausalito, closing 96 years of rail
Still debated
The 1929 Mount Tamalpais fire is often blamed for the mountain railway's end, but the local historical society attributes it to automobile competition. The twenty thousand fares a day figure is a best case; roughly ten thousand individuals is the defensible reading.