SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – It’s spring here in the Beehive State, which means flowers are blooming, trees are getting their leaves and roads are getting their orange cones. The construction season has arrived.
ABC4’s Craig Wirth actually finds building exciting. According to him, the fact that workers are coming to open the roads gives us the opportunity to relive our history. And he said crews have struck historic gold in recent years by finding forgotten streetcar tracks.
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The biggest trolley line haul happened a few years ago along 9th South – and last year they found even more along State Street.
Trolleys traveled all the way to Holladay from downtown Salt Lake City. They were last used in 1927, but started in what we know today as Trolley Square.
The carts rumbled, clattered and shook, and people loved it.
“For starters, you’re going faster than anything else you can do at the time except a train. And so this was a quick, quick way for people to get somewhere,” said trolley historian Michael DeGroote. “Faster than walking, faster than a horse, and they didn’t have cars – so it was great for them. They could go wherever they wanted as quickly as they could.”
What happened that caused people to bury the tracks?
“These traces have been hidden since at least 1927. 1927 is the last year they only had trolley cars here,” DeGroote said. “Then they started using motor coaches, which are buses that use the overhead wires. And then they introduced gas cans in the 1940s. And eventually the trolley cars disappeared.”
In 1945, a storm flooded the city, and with it came the last of the few remaining trolleys.
Watch Craig Wirth’s full movie Wirth Watch for more.
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