Our Past Is Present October 25, 2018

October 25, 2018

            This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.

            Today’s story is titled “Mass Transit Comes To Junction City In 1901”.  On August 1^st of 1901, the first trolley cars of the Junction City-to-Fort Riley Electric Railway rolled onto Washington Street.  This was the beginning of the first “mass transit” system in our community and would ultimately link the prairie post and Junction City through flood, fire, famine and war for over three decades.           

            The idea had been tried by numerous people and at least on two other occasions. However, by the turn of the 20^th century, the time for the electric railway had come and in 1900 and 1901 a third group succeeded in organizing and getting the trolley line construction underway.

            Permission was gained to run the streetcar tracks along 8th Street, then north on Washington Street and then through the rural “flats” along the northwest side of Grant Avenue, which was then mainly a wagon road to the Republican River.  It was necessary for the company to construct a four-span steel bridge set on concrete-filled steel piers and located a few hundred feet above the junction with the Smoky Hill River.  The destination was Waters Hall on Fort Riley, which at that time was the Headquarters Building on Main Post. 

            Initially, there were only two cars on the Junction City to Fort Riley run.  The first left downtown Junction City at 5:10 in the morning and made the four-mile run to Waters Hall with a return to town by 5:40 AM.  There were two trolleys making these runs every half-hour until 11:10 PM.  The last trolley usually arrived back at the car barn by 1:00 AM completing the day’s run. 

            The cost to ride was 10 cents.  If passengers did not have a dime, they often took the option of paying a nickel and getting off at the Red Box switch point at Grant Avenue and walking the rest of the distance into town or out to post depending on their destination. 

            We have been told that a more specific run from Fort Riley to Junction City was up Grant Avenue to Monroe Street, then to 8^th Street over to Washington Street and back down Grant Avenue on the return to Fort Riley.  Your host has only imagined that trip, but would have enjoyed riding the trolley to and from Fort Riley if it were here today.

            Well… that’s today’s story on “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.