The Rise (and Fall) of the Eureka Streetcar System

“The day of the trolley car seems definitely out, just like the horse and buggy, the high boy bicycle, bareback riders and what have you… When the trolley came into being we thought we had arrived at the ultra in street car travel.”
​-Susie Baker Fountain Papers V 81, pg 192, dated Sept 10 1943

Early Eureka was a small place, locked into its location by the bay on one side and a dense forest on the other. People could walk or ride their horses wherever they had to go. But as the town began to grow in population and physical size with the logging of the neighboring forest and the construction of levees on the bay, a new alternative had to be found for those traveling to the city center from further and further away.  

The first streetcars to move through Eureka were horse drawn ones in 1888. The line ran from H Street from fifth out to J Street and was said to be a very popular line. It was operated by an elderly man named Collins. An editorial reminiscing about the line stated the Collins would irritate passengers in the wintertime with "the odor from [his] lunch, particularly the coffee in the thermos bottle… Mr. Collins paid no attention.” In 1894, a street line was built from 5th street along E street out to the city limits, which at the time was Trinity Street. The streetcar company, named the Eureka Street Railroad Company, came upon tough financial times and on March 30 1897, the horses and rail cars were sold to people in Eureka. However, the need for public transportation was still needed as the area continued to grow. The rights to operate a streetcar line were auctioned off to the highest bidder, who happened to be George Henderson of Oakland.  

In 1903, George Henderson was the Vice President of the newly formed Humboldt Transit Company and announced that three electric trolley cars would be arriving in Eureka to whisk the townspeople into a new era of travel. They were described as attractive cars with glass windows on the sides and no windows on the front and back of the cars, allowing the flow of fresh air through the cars, which could seat 50 and supposedly hold a maximum 150 people. The electric streetcar line began operating September 16, 1903 with only slight difficulty- two cars jumped the tracks on the first day at California and Summer streets. Regardless on that first day of operation, 3000 people rode the trolley cars (our of a population of 11,000). Talks began almost immediately about adding a line out to Arcata.

Map from the Summer 2009 Humboldt Historian article "Song of the Streetcars" by Naida Olsen Gipsen

Henderson’s concern was to continue expanding the trolley lines in Eureka, a concern supported to a great degree by lumber companies in the area, who had built their mills on the far sides of town and needed to be sure that workers would be able to get to the mills for work each day. Within a month, the streetcar line on California was extended from Wabash to Harris Street. Within a year, the E Street line was extended to go from 2nd street to Harris Street. The street lines also ran from Bucksport to Harrison Avenue and from California and Harris out to E Street and from Harris to Sequoia park with a spur on J Street. There were plans to build a streetcar line connecting Arcata and Eureka along the Old Arcata Road (a route that had been surveyed by J. N. Lentell of Lentell Map fame), however this route was shot down by the Eureka City Council in fear that the streetcar would interfere with already operating passenger service on the California and Northern Railroad along the Bay. There were also talks about having a line from Eureka to Ferndale.

Tickets from the Eureka Street Rail Road Co and Humboldt Transport Co., courtesy of the Humboldt County Historical Society

The streetcars operated without issues for a few decades, however, issues did arise. A girl was standing on the tracks one dark and stormy night and was hit north of Harris on E Street. She happened to be the daughter of the superintendent of Jetty Repair, Mr. Powers. He sued the company and won, however the case was appealed and settled out of court. A popular Halloween prank was to grease the tracks and wait for an unsuspecting trolley car. One year, cars went across greased tracks at Harris and Bucksport and the cars jumped the tracks and ended up “many feet beyond the end of the line”. There are also a few quotes about “the arrest and trial of a “youngster who put rocks on the track”, however we haven’t been able to find out the outcome of this case.

Eventually, when the streetcar company faced financial difficulty. That difficulty may be related to the fact that Henderson was sued by his ex-wife Bereba Henderson for the money he used to promote the streetcar line and other railroad interests, which totaled about $6,000. Other sources say that the transportation company also operated an oil business, which was profitable enough to cover shortfalls with the trolley system until the company lost its oil contract and had to recoup losses by reducing trolley car crew sizes to one man operated cars, however it wasn’t enough. The City of Eureka took over managing the cars until a bus system was created and the streetcars took their last ride on February 20, 1940.  

The Manning Transportation Company had bid for the franchise to run a bus system for the city and won. The new bus system, Eureka City Lines, opened on February 23 to much fanfare, summarized by local newspaperman Will Speegle: “Seldom, if ever, have there been so many people on Eureka’s streets at any celebration time. The features of the parade were a mule-drawn, old -time car and three of the electric cars that have been discarded. The climax of the celebration was the igniting of one of the old streetcars [streetcar number 18] as it stood on the Fifth Street track in front of the White House. In a few minutes the old car was a seething mass of flames and the nearby portion of the street on either side was like an oven, scorching some of the buildings. A fire alarm was sounded, and a fire pumper arrived and soon had the flames under control” There are a number of photos of this event, with crowds watching the spectacular end of the streetcar system. Looking closer, one can see that there is a live band, including a few tubas and a trombone and people filling the streets, some people are even watching from nearby rooftops.

Look at that crowd!

Thanks to Clarke Board Member and HSU Special Collections Librarian Carly Marino for sending over scans of the Susie Baker Fountain Papers for this article. The Susie Baker Fountain Papers are publicly accessible through the Humboldt State University Special Collections. You can learn more about this spectacular collection here.
Thanks also to Morgan Harvey at the Humboldt County Historical Society for sending over the incredibly thorough and helpful Humboldt Historian article named "Streetcar System began with horse-drawn cars" by Lynwood Carranco and scans of tickets