Old Missoula

Streetcars Reach End of Line – 1935

Veteran Missoula Streetcars Reach “End of the Line” in Sale To Tourist Camps to Become Cabins for City’s Motor Visitors

Custodian Recalls History Of Service Displaced When Motor Buses Came to City

By Tom Wigal.

Stripped almost to bare shells, Missoula’s old streetcars, with a record of having traveled a distance equal to 24 times around the world in their 22 years of service, are taking their last trips on trucks from the car bans to the west side of the city where they will finish their days of usefulness as tourist cabins.

And with the selling of the cars 25 years of loyal service to them is ended for George Whitcomb, now in charge of the Montana Power company warehouse. It was in 1910 that Mr. Whitcomb came here to unpack the cars and put them into operation. Today it is Mr. Whitcomb who is in charge of the work of stripping those same cars.

During the 22 years that they were operated here, Mr. Whitcomb, as mechanical foreman, had charge of the maintenance of the cars, and he tended them well. Since the service was discontinued early on the morning of January 25, 1932, he has made frequent visits to the car barns to inspect them. He was devoted to those cars.

Pain is Personal.

“It was as if I was being hit myself,” he said when the first blow of a sledge hammer was struck recently in the work of dismantling them.

In 1910, the service was started with lines running to the University, Milltown, the car barns, and Daly addition. In the same year, the Milltown line was extended to Bonner and the car barns line to the fort. The following year the east-west line was added to the system and in 1916, a line was run to the sugar factory but was later torn up when the factory was taken out.

At its height the system boasted 10 city cars, one interurban, two open summer cars, a locomotive, sweeper, work car and seven flatcars, the latter being used for freight, principally for hauling wood.

Early One-Man Type.

It was a modern system, the cars being among the first, if not the first one-man cars in the United States, but the growing popularity of the automobile as a method of transportation wrote red into the ledgers of the operating company during the last several years the cars were in use and ultimately spelled the doom of the system.

On January 20, 1932, the Montana Railroad commission granted permission to abandon the system and shortly after midnight on the twenty-fifth, Ralph L. Starr, now justice of the peace, then motorman on the late University run, brought his car into the barns and the doors swung shut, bringing the system to a close.

The tracks were torn up, the streets repaved. Today nearly all signs of the service have disappeared. The tracks still stretch across the Higgins avenue bridge and the now-lonely pilings of the bridge across the Rattlesnake still stand but there is little else left.

Will Be Camp Cabins.

The final act is taking place. The 10 city cars and the interurban are going to Sam Mercer’s tourist camp where they will be converted into cabins. The two summer cars already have gone to T. K. Thompson’s camp and will there be reconditioned for a similar purpose.

The sweeper, the locomotive, work-car and seven flatcars also will go. The locomotive will be sold as such and the Montana Power company will raze the buildings on the ground where the cars were once housed and tended. Only the blacksmith shop and barns will be left. The blacksmith shop will be used by the power company as a store house; the barns will be sold or rented.

The above article appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on August 25, 1935.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/352384913/

 

Another nice article about the streetcars appeared in The Missoulian on March 30, 1958.

It featured several photos which included the cars, tracks, bridge pilings, and the maintenance facility on 14^th & Johnson Streets. It listed several men who ran the cars including:

E. L. Ashenbrenner, Peter Barron, Fritz Frey, K. B. Frye, W. C. LaMontagne, Walter Mannix, Sam Myers, Ralph L. Starr, Frank Williams, and Frank Roedl.

See the link below:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349963550/?terms=%22car%2Bbarns%22