First generation cable cars

Cable cars were invented by Andrew Smith Hallidie in San Francisco in 1873. Hallidie's cable car system was based on early mining conveyance systems and dominated the city’s transit scene for more than 30 years.  Hallidie's cable car system would survive the great San Francisco earthquake and fires of 1906, soldier on through two World Wars and outlast political attempts to remove the cars from city streets in the late 1940s and 1950s to become the worldwide symbol of San Francisco that it is today.

Today, 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. 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.

Clay Street Hill Railroad was the sole San Francisco cable car company for four years. A former horsecar company, Sutter Street Railroad, developed its own version of Hallidie's patented system and began cable service in 1877, followed by California Street Cable Railroad (1878), Geary Street, Park & Ocean Railroad (1880), Presidio & Ferries Railroad (1882), Market Street Cable Railway (1883), Ferries & Cliff House Railway (1888), and Omnibus Railroad & Cable Company (1889).

All totaled, San Francisco companies had laid down 53 miles of track stretching from the Ferry Building to the Presidio, to Golden Gate Park, to the Castro, and to the Mission.

By 1947, the lower operational costs of buses prompted Mayor Roger Lapham to declare, "the city should get rid of all cable car lines as soon as possible."

In response, Friedel Klussmann founded the Citizens' Committee to Save the Cable Cars. The committee began a public campaign showing that the cable cars’ value to San Francisco was far greater than their operational cost. They succeeded in placing an amendment on the November ballot, Measure 10.

Newspapers picked up the story and public support grew quickly. Life magazine did a photo spread on gripmen. Celebrities rallied for the cable cars; business owners realized that tourists didn't come to San Francisco to ride the buses.

Measure 10 passed in a landslide victory and the city of San Francisco had rallied to save the Powell Street cable car system.

SFMTA