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It was built by F.M. "Borax" Smith, who was a real estate developer (he got into real estate using money he first made mining borax.) Smith used the same trifecta that made a fortune for Henry Huntington in Los Angeles: he built streetcar lines (the Key System) that ran to his new suburban subdivisions in the East Bay, and sold both electricity via powerplants that he also owned.
Henry Huntington and his Pacific Electric interurbans (and Los Angeles Railway streetcars) are the best-known example of this kind of development: the PE was the most extensive streetcar/interurban network in the world, and was responsible for much of the urban fabric of the Los Angeles region (lines ran out as far as Redlands and into Orange County!) The PE/LARY had its own set of amusement parks and attractions, like Santa Monica Pier, plus mountain resorts via the Mount Lowe Railway. Huntington first learned this business building streetcar lines and suburban tracts in San Francisco when he worked for Southern Pacific (a company owned at the time by his uncle Collis P. Huntington.) When he was not made President after Uncle Collis died, he moved to Los Angeles and started his own company!
Using streetcars to promote suburban growth and move people to attractions actually predates the electric streetcar: in Sacramento, the first permanent streetcar line was intended to carry people from the old Central Pacific passenger depot to the California State Fair grand pavilion and its racetrack (and was owned by one of the organizers of the State Fair.) Within a few years, there were lines running to privately owned parks (East Park) and suburbs sprung up along the streetcar line. When the state fairgrounds moved in 1905, a new electric line was run to the new fairgrounds, and the old racetrack was developed as a new streetcar suburbs. Sacramento's first suburb outside the city limits, Oak Park, started out with a wooded park by the same name at the end of the line, a sales point for suburban lots--but after the line electrified (it was then owned by the local electric company), the park became "Joyland", an electric amusement park.
The other end of these streetcar lines was downtown: the idea was to allow people who worked downtown to commute home to an idyllic suburb using the streetcar. Originally streetcar suburbs were intended for the middle class, not the working class--but over time, working-class passengers became more important, and lines were used to transport workers to manufacturing centers from working-class suburbs.
In a crucial turning point, Parker sold the land in 1886 for $17,500 to the Ohio Grove Corporation, a group headed by two steamboat captains - William and Malcolm McIntyre. Like the trolley parks, that were just starting to spread throughout the United States to stimulate trolley ridership, the two captains purchased Ohio Grove to encourage travel on their boats.
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The relaxing 60 minute riverboat ride from the crowded city to the wooded grounds of Coney Island was a relaxing getaway and was immediately popular, becoming as big a part of the day at the park as the attractions themselves.
From what you have described of your neighborhood, if it was built out before about 1930, I'm willing to wager that it was originally a streetcar suburb, and the streetcar line was later converted to a bus route. Denver had a pretty good streetcar network, including interurbans that ran out to Boulder, Eldorado Springs, Leyden, Golden and Littleton. The change-over from streetcars to buses probably happened before you were born.
As governments started providing hard-surfaced paved roads in suburban communities, some streetcar companies began replacing streetcars with buses as early as the 1920s, and as companies like National City Lines bought up streetcar companies they were replaced with buses (sold by NCL's stockholder General Motors, and fueled with NCL stockholder Standard Oil's gasoline.)
I have posted lists of standard works on suburban-development history before, not websites but actual academic works, before, but here's a short list again:
Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs
Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia
Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier
Most are available from any good library.
But just to be extra helpful, here's a chapter from a book on the subject you can read for free online: Henry Huntington and the Creation of Southern California, by William B. Friedricks, specifically Chapter 4, which explains how Huntington combined the businesses of streetcars, electric power, and real estate, to make money selling all three at once:
Dang! I was in the middle of a lengthly response to this when my internet quit working, blowing away everything including some neat links I had. I will try to reconstruct, b/c I think it's important enough.
First of all, wburg, if you actually read my posts for comprehension, instead of just trying to prove me wrong all the time, you would remember that I am not originally from Colorado; I am from a mill town west of Pittsburgh. In fact, I grew up near JR_C, and my high school picnics took place at Idora Park.
Anyway, for all of you who think there absolutely HAD to be a streetcar before there was bus service, you are, sadly, wrong. In fact, the little burb I grew up in was at one time serviced by an incline, something JR_C and Ohiogirl81 might be familiar with.
Now, to transportation in my present town, Louisville, Colorado. Here are some excerpts from a book about Louisville, "The Louisville Story". It does not appear to be on the web, but be assured, I took great pains to quote it correctly in places and convey the correct meaning when I paraphrased.
Louisville was an old coal mining town.
"The Colorado and Southern train came through daily so that transportation to the cities of Boulder or Denver could be handled with a minimum of effort.
But for daily transportation to the mines, the men depended on their own power and walked to work."
Re: the Denver Interurban-
It was established in 1908. It ran from Denver to Boulder with a stop in Louisville. There were 16 trains a day. The interurban system was set up because its backers expectaed a population boom that did not materialize. It went into receivershiop in 1918. On Labor Day, September 20, 1920
"Louisville baseball fans crowded onto the cars of the regularly scheduled train heading for Denver to see a Labor Day baseball game. A special train was made up to take a holiday crowd from Denver to Eldorado Springs, and a conductor was recruited for the special train who was unfamiliar with the regular schdule. The special train was allowed to leave the Globeville station before the track ahead ahad been cleared of traffic-before the train had arrived from Louisville."
The two trains collided and and thirteen people died and many were injured.
Six of the dead and 40 of the injured were from Louisville.
The interurban went into bankruptcy. The company was reorganized but the competition from the bus lines in the city of Denver was too great and not enough traffic was genrated from the estimated 3000 people who lived along the interurban. The interurban closed in December 1926.
ETA: The interurban used the tracks of the Colorado and Southern RR. It was not a streetcar.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 09-08-2011 at 07:15 PM..
First of all, wburg, if you actually read my posts for comprehension, instead of just trying to prove me wrong all the time, you would remember that I am not originally from Colorado; I am from a mill town west of Pittsburgh. In fact, I grew up near JR_C, and my high school picnics took place at Idora Park.
Yes, I remember that, and your mom pulled you to the store in a little red wagon. The Denver Interurban went out of business before you were born regardless of where you were living at the time.
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Anyway, for all of you who think there absolutely HAD to be a streetcar before there was bus service, you are, sadly, wrong. In fact, the little burb I grew up in was at one time serviced by an incline, something JR_C and Ohiogirl81 might be familiar with.
The link you posted clearly states that the incline is a form of streetcar.
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Now, to transportation in my present town, Louisville, Colorado. Here are some excerpts from a book about Louisville, "The Louisville Story". It does not appear to be on the web, but be assured, I took great pains to quote it correctly in places and convey the correct meaning when I paraphrased.
Louisville was an old coal mining town.
"The Colorado and Southern train came through daily so that transportation to the cities of Boulder or Denver could be handled with a minimum of effort.
But for daily transportation to the mines, the men depended on their own power and walked to work."
Re: the Denver Interurban-
It was established in 1908. It ran from Denver to Boulder with a stop in Louisville. There were 16 trains a day. The interurban system was set up because its backers expectaed a population boom that did not materialize. It went into receivershiop in 1918. On Labor Day, September 20, 1920
"Louisville baseball fans crowded onto the cars of the regularly scheduled train heading for Denver to see a Labor Day baseball game. A special train was made up to take a holiday crowd from Denver to Eldorado Springs, and a conductor was recruited for the special train who was unfamiliar with the regular schdule. The special train was allowed to leave the Globeville station before the track ahead ahad been cleared of traffic-before the train had arrived from Louisville."
The two trains collided and and thirteen people died and many were injured.
Six of the dead and 40 of the injured were from Louisville.
The interurban went into bankruptcy. The company was reorganized but the competition from the bus lines in the city of Denver was too great and not enough traffic was genrated from the estimated 3000 people who lived along the interurban. The interurban closed in December 1926.
ETA: The interurban used the tracks of the Colorado and Southern RR. It was not a streetcar.
Electric interurban railroads also produced streetcar suburbs. Interurban equipment was larger and faster than city-bound streetcars but they worked pretty much the same--they were based on fixed tracks, which were what conveyed the permanence of the development. Before there were streetcar and interurban suburbs, there were steam railroad suburbs and riverboat suburbs. The streetcar suburb developers I mentioned earlier (Borax Smith's Key System, Henry Huntington's Pacific Electric) owned INTERURBAN railroad systems--but the suburbs they developed were still "streetcar suburbs"!
Interurbans were electric railroads!
From The Electric Interurban Railways in America:
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The second interurban out of Denver was the Denver and Interurban, a Colorado & Southern subsidiary. The 51-mile road operated northwestward from Denver to Boulder, on a track laid alongside the Colorado & Southern mainl line to Burns Junction, and thence on C&S trackage to Boulder by two routes that comprised a loop, one via Louisville and the other via Marshall. A spur, operated only in the summer, extended from Marshall to Eldorado Springs. Electrification of the line was completed and the road placed in operation in 1908. Originally the cars reached downtown Denver via Tramways tracks to 16th and Arapahoe, but in 1923 C&S trackage was electrified into Union Station, and the operation over streetcar tracks was discontinued.
In other words, you live in a streetcar suburb, serviced by an electric interurban railroad, whose routes were later replaced by buses. And prior to the interurban's presence, miners waled to work--in other words, a walkable neighborhood. Thanks for proving me right!
I'm something of a left-leaning libertarian and I prefer the city, but not for political reasons... I just like it better than the suburbs!
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Uhhhhh ... That's the Idora Park JR_C was talking about ... Seeing as he's from Youngstown and all that ... 
