Curious Minnesota: Where did suburban streetcar lines run and why were they removed?

At its peak, Twin City Rapid Transit had 524 miles of track and car­ried 200 mil­lion rid­ers each year.

See the city as it once was—a pictorial history of the trolleys that traversed Twin Cities neighborhoods.A hun­dred years ago, you could get from Minneapolis to Excelsior as quick­ly as that 18-mile trip takes today at rush hour — about 45 min­utes — but in­stead of fum­ing in grid­lock, you'd breeze along, gaz­ing at fields and trees from a street­car.

From the late 1800s to the 1930s, streetcars were the pri­mary mode of trav­el with­in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but also east to Stillwater, Bayport and White Bear Lake and west to Lake Minnetonka.

Streetcars brought to­gether peo­ple of all socio­eco­no­mic class­es, said John Diers, co-au­thor with Aaron Isaacs of "Twin Cities by Trol­ley: The Street­car Era in Minneapolis and St. Paul."

Article at Star Tribune.

Published in: Star Tribune
By: Katy Read