Editorials

During the 19th and early 20th centuries public transportation was built by private entrepreneurs with the anticipation of future development and population growth.  

Only three years after the University of California opened its first campus in Berkeley in 1873, Francis Kittredge Shattuck and James Barker convinced Leland Stanford to lay a spur track of his Central Pacific Railroad (in 1885 the Southern Pacific) into central Berkeley.  

Shattuck not only anticipated future population growth, but positioned himself to direct and take economic advantage of that growth. In 1876 the University of California had only been open for three years and had a student body of 310 and a teaching staff of 38. Hardly enough total population to justify the capital outlay of building a rail line. 

Although Berkeley’s first electric streetcar lines were operating in 1891, there were still many old fashioned horse drawn trolleys and steam driven railcars on four different sized tracts. In 1893, Francis Marion “Borax” Smith (famous for his “20 Mule Team” borax products), inspired by C. P. Huntington who successfully held a monopoly on the interurban streetcar lines in Los Angeles, began to purchase all the private streetcar lines in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.  

By 1903 Smith had unified and modernized these companies and then expanded them into a coordinated transit system that eventually included ferries and was called the Key System. The AC Transit System that today operates in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, established by voters in 1960, is the legacy of the Key System, as is Key Route Boulevard that traverses Albany and El Cerrito.  

As Smith was creating his transit system, he also was buying large tracts of farm and ranch lands through his Realty Syndicate for subdivision and development. He also partnered with various developers and created a network of companies.  

When the Key System streetcars began running on College Avenue in 1903, the farm land along the route was subdivided for housing and small commercial districts. The Arlington Line was extended to Kensington in 1912, opening up that grazing area for development. Buses began to replace streetcars in Berkeley as early as 1921, but the trains continued to run until the late 1940s.  

The Bay Area Electric Railroad Association was formed in 1946 to preserve and interpret the history of electric railroads. At the Western Railway Museum and Archive Center at Rio Vista Junction in Solano County (www.wrm.org) a visitor not only can see historic electric streetcars, but also take a ride on them.  

Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny is the author of “Berkeley Landmarks” and writes this column in conjunction with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.