The Edinboro Route An Interurban Street Railway

Abstract

One hundred years ago the trolley car was a symbol of the future, of the promise of the twentieth century. This was especially true of the interurban trolley, which in 1900 was entering its heyday. For small towns and country crossroads it offered affordable, dependable access to the rapidly advancing world of urban America, and in doing so, it redefined the scope of life in rural areas. The comparatively high speed travel offered by the trolley led to significant changes in worker mobility, recreation choices, and patterns of settlement. Yet in a span of thirty years this form of transportation went from innovative to passe. The process reflects larger trends which permanently transformed the American landscape, the most notable being the development of the internal combustion engine and the proliferation of the automobile, truck and bus. At the local level this story of the dramatic rise and subsequent decline of the interurban trolley can be told in microcosm through an examination of one of several northwest Pennsylvania interurban lines known as “The Edinboro Route.”