Happy 147th Birthday to Our Cable Cars

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Happy birthday to our iconic cable cars; they were invented by Andrew Smith Hallidie right here in San Francisco in 1873. Hallidie based his designs off of early mining conveyance systems. Hallidie’s cable car system have stood the test of time, surviving through Great San Francisco Earthquake and fires of 1906, two World Wars, and even outlasted through political attempts to remove the cars from city streets in the late 1940s and 1950s. Could you imagine our city without our cable cars? 

Birth of the Cable Car

Andrew Smith Hallidie tested the first cable car at 4 o’clock in the morning, August 2, 1873, on San Francisco’s Clay Street. His idea for a steam engine-powered, cable driven rail system was conceived in 1869, after witnessing horses being whipped while they struggled on the wet cobblestones to pull a horsecar up Jackson Street.

Hallidie’s father was an inventor who had a patent in Great Britain for “wire rope” cable. Hallidie immigrated to the U.S. in 1852 during the Gold Rush. He began using cable in a system he had developed to haul ore from mines and in building suspension bridges.

Hallidie entered into a partnership to form the Clay Street Hill Railroad, which began construction of a cable line on Clay Street in May of 1873. The contract to operate on city streets stated the line must be operational by August 1. It was launched on the August 2. Even though they were a day late the cable car trials received great approval. Clay Street Hill Railroad began public service on September 1, 1873. It was a tremendous success.

San Francisco’s cable cars are one of two National Historic Streetcar Landmarks in operation (New Orleans’ St. Charles streetcar line is the other), and both the continued operation and minimum level of service of our cable cars are locked into San Francisco’s City Charter.

Read more about Cable Car History at SFMTA.

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