<h1>The Most Beautiful Streetcar Line in the World</h1>

Looking south at the intersection of 8th and Main Streets in Springfield during the late-1920s. Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida.

In 1893, the Main Street Railway introduced electric-powered streetcars to the city, with the first electric streetcar running from Bay Street, over Hogans Creek, to First and Main Streets. In 1901, it was acquired by Henry B Plant’s Plant System and regauged to match of track of Plant’s larger Jacksonville Street Railway. After the Great Fire of 1901, the Main Street Railway was consolidated with the Jacksonville Street Railway and the Jacksonville Electric Light Company to form a new 15-mile streetcar and utility company called the Jacksonville Electric Company.

In 1906, the Main Street Line was upgraded as a part of a $26,000 laundry list of improvements by the Jacksonville Electric Company. Improvements included double tracking and a new concrete bridge over Hogans Creek. Also referred to many as the “Most Beautiful Streetcar Line in the World”, the entire line was sodded over and landscaped with rows of palm trees, converting Main Street into true linear parkway.

The Main Street Railway looking north, just north of the Hogans Creek Bridge. Main Street was a multimodal street with dedicated right-of-way for pedestrians, cyclist, wagons, mass transit and shade trees. This is a context sensitive street design Jacksonville struggles to embrace a century later. Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida.

On March 31, 1911, with the city taking over residential electric power production, the streetcar system was branded as the Jacksonville Traction Company. Although 13,828,904 passengers rode the system in 1912 and it had expanded to 59 miles of track by 1930, the era of streetcars on Main Street and Jacksonville would come to an abrupt end.

In 1932, the streetcar company was acquired by the Motor Transit Company for $335,000. In 1933, the company began replacing streetcars with buses, leading to the final regular streetcar service in the city, ceasing operations permanently on December 12, 1936. A century after the Jacksonville Electric Company’s double tracking of Main Street’s Hogans Creek Bridge, the time has come to replace the structure.

In celebration of its 100th birthday, a piece of early Jacksonville mass transit history has been unearthed.