I just realized that there at at least two "streetcars posing in front of the boss's house" photographs showing B. S. Josselyn's imposing home at SE Belmont and 66th. This was originally the Massachusetts Building at the Lewis & Clark Fair, moved here to become a mental hospital in 1906.
Portland Streetcar History
Just when you think you've pretty much covered every streetcar line in town, both built and never-built, along comes another one!
In 1913, the board of the Mount Scott Park cemetery tried to force the Portland Railway, Light & Power Co. to extend the Mount Scott line from Lents to the cemetery. 🧵
PRL&P wanted none of it, citing a $40,000 construction cost and the fact that dead people tended not to make for profitable streetcar lines. The board and local residents appealed to the State Utility Commission, saying the line was a needed public service, but this gambit failed.
Despite promises of limitless Eastern and foreign capital, nothing ever emerged. After the initial excitement, a new ordinance was submitted to council in January 1911. The newspapers never reported the result of that meeting, and the next that was heard of the company was its dissolution in 1914.
Just when you think you've pretty much covered every streetcar line in town, both built and never-built, along comes another one!
In 1913, the board of the Mount Scott Park cemetery tried to force the Portland Railway, Light & Power Co. to extend the Mount Scott line from Lents to the cemetery. 🧵
By late 1910, Keady had formed the Portland Subway Company and had plans to connect a west side underground loop with 150 miles of surface rail on the east side (in direct competition with the established PRL&P network!) with tunnel portals on Hawthorne and in Sullivan's Gulch.
Every so often, the idea of a tunnel under the Willamette for MAX trains comes up, but it's really nothing new. The idea of a tube under the river for electric rail goes back at least as far as 1906 when Y. L Keady and Thomas McCusker submitted such an ordinance to the city council for review.
Every so often, the idea of a tunnel under the Willamette for MAX trains comes up, but it's really nothing new. The idea of a tube under the river for electric rail goes back at least as far as 1906 when Y. L Keady and Thomas McCusker submitted such an ordinance to the city council for review.
A secondary appeal to the Portland City Council (Lents had just been annexed) also failed, and that was that. I haven't found any evidence of a planned route: the most direct way would have been to cross Johnson Creek at Lents and drop down SE 105th to the cemetery entrance on Mt. Scott Blvd.
