|
|
The Truman Area Community Network
|
Preliminary Version, more later
The Clinton Street Railway Company was chartered in the spring of 1888. A. P. Frowein was President of the company and the H. P. Faris its Secretary and Treasurer. After several months of discussions, the city council of Clinton on July 18, 1888 passed an ordinance authorizing the building of the street railway.
The proposed route ran from the North Clinton Depot southwest along the MKT tracks to Fifth Street, and then via Fifth, Franklin, Washington, Ohio, Orchard, and Allen to the Artesian Park, and south to the vicinity of the well, and thence back via Rogers and Artesian Avenues to near Allen and McClane. The portion from the MK&T tracks at Franklin Street to the well was to be built first, with the Rogers and Artesian Avenue loop next and the North Clinton line last. (About a month after the street railway ordinance was passed, the city passed an ordinance calling for the building of a bridge over the Kansas City Clinton & Springfield railways tracks near McClane and Allen, this to be used by the street railway. Although the bridge over the KCC&S was completed in October of 1888, the map of Clinton in the 1895 Plat Book shows the street railway line as staying on Allen street to cross the KCC&S line at grade.)
Work on the street railway began in August and the line was opened from the MK&T tracks by what would eventually be the Cozart Hotel (now the location of the Mercantile Bank office) to a point near the well in Artesian Park. The line was laid to the odd gauge of 4 feet 1 inch - seven and one half inches less than the standard gauge of 4 feet 8 and one half inches used by nearly all railroads in the U.S. According to Poor's Manual of Railroads for 1890 the company had 3 street cars and 9 mules for motive power.
In 1892 the Artesian Hotel was completed at the park end of the line, about where the present American Legion Building is located now. The company did a fair business carrying passengers to the Hotel and Park from the various railroad depots, although it was handicapped by the fact that the closest it got to the Katy and Leaky Roof depots was still several hundred muddy feet and it missed the Blair Line's Green Street depot by a full block.
The financial depression that followed the Panic of 1893 hit the Street Railway hard. The developing resort at Excelsior Springs, Missouri, much closer and more easily accessible to Kansas City, grabbed most of the city visitors and local business was not sufficient to support the Artesian Hotel, which operated only sporadically during the late 1890s and early 1900s. There were too few people living along the street railway's route for it to develop much "commuter" traffic and summer weekend traffic to "The Well" was not enough to keep the line afloat.
Around 1897 H. P. Faris took over as President of the Street Railway. Business continued to fall. The U. S. Census Bureau did a study on Street Railways in 1901, and according to their figures, the Clinton Street Railway had run just 1,500 car miles that year, carrying 3,258 passengers - figures that work out to less than two round trips a day and barely two passengers per trip - with 2 cars and rented horses.
The years 1902 and 1903 saw much agitation about the laying of brick paving on many of the streets around the square. The decrepit old streetcar line appeared to be a serious obstacle in the way of such progress, for it could not afford to pave around its own tracks, yet refused to quit running, possibly in the hope of extracting some sort of assistance from the city. In February of 1903 several residents of Orchard Street took matters into their own hands and one snowy night went to work taking up about 300 feet of the Street Railway's tracks in Orchard.
With the track severed in Orchard Street, the Street Railway could not make its required franchise runs to the Park and back, effectively forfeiting its charter. The line's owners were in no hurry to remove their tracks, and finally on Friday, May 1, 1903 a group of about 20 men gathered at the Allen Street crossing of the streetcar line over the KCC&S tracks, and began taken up the tracks. More joined in the project as the work progressed until there were nearly 150 on hand when the last rail was lifted from in front of the Cozart Hotel. The crowd then silently dispersed and later no one would admit to having taken part in the uprooting of the street railway. On Saturday, May 2, the city street department gathered up all the rails and dumped them in a vacant lot near the County Jail on South Washington Street.