Phoenix Trolley Museum: The Cars That Built the City
Arizona
Phoenix once ran on streetcars. From eighteen eighty-seven through nineteen forty-eight, electric trolleys stitched the city together, and at the system's peak in nineteen twenty-nine, more than six million passengers rode them in a single year.
The end came suddenly. In nineteen forty-seven, a fire destroyed most of the surviving streetcar fleet. The system never recovered.
The Phoenix Trolley Museum was founded in the nineteen seventies to save what little remained. A group of enthusiasts tracked down original car number one hundred sixteen, restored it, and built a collection around it. Today the museum sits in the historic Grand Avenue Arts district, one of the earliest trolley corridors in the city.
Three original Phoenix streetcars survive. They are relics of a transit system the city tore out in favor of the automobile, and spent decades and billions trying to rebuild.
