Following the Money Behind Minneapolis's Lost Streetcars

In 1898 the Twin City Rapid Transit Company joined two lines into one: the Como–Harriet, seventeen miles from Lake Harriet to downtown St. Paul. On the ridge between Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun, where the cars turned around on a circle of track called the Loop, a neighborhood grew up around a single stop: Linden Hills. A drugstore, groceries, milliners, the Harriet Theater, a bank and a fire station all opened within a short walk of the tracks. By 1920 the system carried about 238 million riders a year. Then in 1949 a New York financier, Charles Green, took control of the company, and Minneapolis attorney Fred Ossanna soon replaced him. The streetcars were gone by June 1954. The modern cars were sold to Mexico City, Newark and Shaker Heights, and the old ones were burned for scrap. This isn't a myth. It's a court record. On 6 August 1960 a federal jury convicted Ossanna and his operations chief of fraud over how the company's assets were sold off. Today you can still trace the old line at 43rd and Upton, and ride a restored car on a surviving piece of the Como–Harriet right-of-way. Did your family ride the Twin Cities streetcars, or do you live on a street that grew around one? Tell me in the comments. #Minneapolis #StreetcarHistory #TwinCities