(gentle music) - [Narrator] If you look closely, you can still see hints of a model of what public transportation should be.

Ohio led the way an interurban rail service in the first half of the 20th century.

(gentle music) - It changed all of the east side of Cleveland, Northeast Ohio.

- Streets were in bad shape back then.

- If you go back to the 1800s, everything was moved by horse.

Horses were slow, the roads were terrible, they needed a better way to move things and along came the streetcar.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, on July 27th, 1884, the first public Electric Street Railroad went into use in East Cleveland, Ohio.

The converted horse-drawn street car propelled by an arc-light dynamo designed by Charles Brush traveled on one and a half miles of track, and was an immediate success.

Despite the accomplishment, it only lasted a little over a year because the streets were being torn up for sewers, but was long enough to predict the end of the horse era.

- Streetcar basically made its own road.

We put down steel rails on ties and was able to go across the muddy roads like nothing.

- Before the interurban was built, it would take 16 to 18 hours to go from here, Geauga County, to Cleveland.

There were no bridges, very few roads, and if you wanted to cross the Chagrin River, there were no bridges, you had to wait until the springtime or summer when the water was low to cross.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In the first years of the 20th century, Cleveland emerged as one of the foremost centers for interurbans.

The gentle landscape along the lake and closely spaced towns made a perfect location for the street cars.

- This was the railroad yard of the Cleveland and Eastern.

You will see a number of at least four different tracks.

This building was in operation from June 1900 until about October, when there was a major fire.

The building burned down.

- [Narrator] Dan Rager has written four books, with more to come, on the interurbans.

He gives tours and presentations on the streetcars, describing the history of the interurbans including the city of Cleveland.

(coins clinking) - The Everett-Moore did own that system.

They built the powerhouse that is now an entertainment facility today, and that line operated until 1942 when the city of Cleveland took it over.

- [Narrator] Originally, there were many small independent lines in Cleveland, until Henry Everett came along as a street railway magnet.

In 1893, he became president of Cleveland Electric Railway.

In 1894, he joined into a partnership with Edward Moore, forming the Everett-Moore Syndicate.

In 1895, they built the Akron, Bedford and Cleveland Railway Line.

In 1899, he consolidated with the Akron Traction and Electric Company with 60 miles of track.

The new company became the Northern Ohio Traction and Light Company.

- The Chagrin line was also owned by Everett and Moore, they built that.

It was built first, they began construction in 1896.

That was built three years before the Cleveland and Eastern.

- [Narrator] Henry A. Everett and Edward Moore became one of the biggest owners of interurbans.

- Once the interurban was built, you could go from Chardon to downtown Cleveland in an hour and 40 minutes, that was lightning speed in those days.

This is an iron bridge, not steel.

Iron process is very different.

There were 100s of these across the country during that time, this is the only remaining bridge left of this type.

- [Narrator] This bridge across the Chagrin River in Gates Mills was once part of the Cleveland and Eastern Maple Leaf Line.

- There are stories I have written about one way cars, and one of them in particular was a coal car that got away in Chesterland coming down the hill Sunday morning, fully loaded, all by itself.

And they said it was shaking the ground like thunder and the whole church was shaking, while there was a sermon going on and they thought that was the end of the world.

And it came through here about 60 miles an hour, and eventually it went across the street here and derailed in what is now the Polo field.

- [Narrator] The Gates Mills stop was stop 21 on the Maple Leaf Line.

- Back in the day it was a blue-collar town.

There were three factories here, one of them was a broom company across the street and the rest were all farmers, this was farmland.

(upbeat music) Well, I think the most interesting part is what little people know about it today, from all of the changes that have occurred because of it.

We have, for example, Gates Mill, which is a totally different place today than it was back in its day.

The center of the line was Gates Mill, the powerhouse, the car barns and the battery station weren't Gates Mill.

It was 16 miles from Cleveland to Gates Mills and another 16 miles from Gates Mills to Chardon, so it was the halfway point, and which was great if you're making electricity because the further you go the voltage drops.

- [Narrator] The next stop east from Gates Mills was Scotland, the Mayfield and Caves road area in Geauga County's Chester Township.

It was named for Mr. Scott, who owned a lot of the land in that area.

Chester Township is now known as Chesterland.

The Cleveland Eastern Historical Society and Museum is located on the Chesterland Historical Society grounds.

The original Scotland Depot can be seen there, plus many photos and buildings from this historic area.

- Most of the line today is now on private property, so people are finding out that, "Hey, there was a railroad on my property 100 years ago and I didn't know that."

- [Narrator] Like in this backyard near Chardon.

- Behind me stands the concrete support of the Cleveland and Eastern trestle.

The trestle was almost a quarter of a mile long, the wall was almost 30 feet high, to give an idea how high this trestle was across the valley here in Chardon.

Riders thought that they were on some amusement park.

Behind this wall is filled with slag, and all of that slag came from the Cleveland Steel Mills it was hauled out here.

1913, they decided to fill in the whole trestle with slag, 1920, the entire trestle went up in flames and it burned for almost five years.

(gentle music) Freight was very important.

Farmers up to this time, if they wanted to sell their products, particularly milk, cheese or corn, et cetera, they had to go to Chardon and put it on the B&O.

The B&O went all the way to Warren, that was the nearest major city.

Once the interurban came in, they shipped milk twice a day, there was a car called Geauga that was the milk car, and it made two trips a day, 2,000 gallons of milk per day, seven days a week.

- [Narrator] Now the farmers could take their milk cans to the corner and have the street cars haul them to Cleveland.

- This was the farmer's boon, just to have an interurban.

Instead of just putting a few milk cans in the back of a wagon and traveling miles and miles to the city, they could now take it down to the corner, take it over there and leave your milk cans there.

interurban will take 'em down to (mumbles) Cleveland, empty and bring the empties back, in the evening you stop at the milk stand, pick up your empties.

Next day you do it all over again.

- [Narrator] There are many creamery and cheese factories still in the area today that owe their existence to the interurbans.

- So commerce really developed once the interurban was here.

There were very few people living out here during that time, most people were farmers, so the area began to develop once the interurban was here, because you had transportation and you had places to sell your product.

- It was two main things they hauled (mumbles) the country of the city, milk is the most common one, they also hauled a lot of hay.

A lot of horses up in that city that needed the hay, that was their second primary farm product that they hauled up there.

- [Narrator] The city of Cleveland started to reap the benefits of having access to rural northeastern Ohio, making Cleveland a central location for the interurbans.

- As these streetcar lines developed, they started saying, "Oh geez, I can connect my streetcar line with your streetcar line over here, and next thing you got a small line between two cities."

That's an interurban.

interurbans grew, then they merged together and ended up with our five major ones running out of Cleveland.

They carried passengers, they carried freights.

- [Narrator] There were 2,798 miles of track in Ohio, 1,000 miles more than any other state.

If your town had a population of 5,000 or more, the interurban system would reach out to your area.

There were nearly 100 individual streetcar lines run by a small number of companies.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - The further you go the voltage drops.

Now they did have a power station, a booster station, at The Rookery, which is people know it today, but back then in what's called The Junction, or (indistinct) Dale Junction.

That's a very fascinating area that I think people really need to visit today, is The Rookery, because a history really began from that area where the road split coming out of Cleveland, it went north to Chardon, and then South Burton, and then Middlefield.

- [Narrator] The interurbans were not only used for freight and passengers, the Chagrin line was used for excursions.

- They were people gondola cars with seats, and it'd have a giant search light in the front and in nighttime they would light up the hills, and it was sort of like being at a movie theater, only it was real life.

They did this during the summertime, that had to be a spectacular experience.

(instrumental music) The Chagrin Line, that line ran due East all the way to Garrettsville.

The Middlefield branch of the Chagrin Falls Line was taken out, or 1906, it came out early.

Then the branch from Troy Station all the way to Chagrin was taken out in 1916.

There were a number of reasons, one there wasn't a lot of ridership 'cause no one lived out there, secondly, there wasn't a lot of electricity.

They didn't have a booster station, so cars that made it all the way to Garrettsville had a hard time, many days, getting up the hill on Garrettsville.

They had contracted a farmer who had a team of horses, to pull the interurban car out of Garrettsville to the top of the hill.

So they needed a power station, that never occurred.

(train bell chimes) (birds chirps) (train horn honks) - We own two miles of the old Cleveland Southwestern interurban line, which we plan to rebuild the track on, and by another mile of track on the main property here.

Right now we have three buildings, our goal is to have six buildings.

- [Narrator] Thanks to the Northern Ohio Railway Museum that was founded in 1965, you can experience what it was like to ride and see some of their historic cars.

- This particular car was built by the Kuhlman Car Company of Cleveland, Ohio in 1914.

- [Narrator] Near the Collinwood Rail Yard, for years you could still see the building with the Kuhlman name on it.

- There were six car manufacturers that made interurban cars, Kuhlman was one.

The very first cars were Jewett cars, the Jewett Car Company.

There was a St. Louis car company and the Niles Car Company here in Niles, Ohio.

And they all made interurban cars and other rail cars for the rail companies.

- [Narrator] Chuck Legree, one of the volunteers is lucky enough to be one of the drivers.

- I rode this car once when it was on RTA, I never expected I would ever actually operate it.

(railroad bell rings) - It was originally built for the Cleveland Railways that operated as a city street car.

It was eventually sold to what became the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit, which is now the RTA Blue and Green Lines.

- Well, I like the trolleys because I started my career in public transit in 1977, operating as a motorman on the former Shaker Heights Rapid Transit Line, and it had been taken over by the RTA in 1975 so I was privileged to work with a number of the motor men who actually started on that line when it was owned by Shaker Heights.

- [Narrator] The Shake Shaker Rapid started out as the Cleveland interurban Railroad.

It was built by Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen, developers of Shaker Heights.

It was an effort to get commuters to downtown Cleveland from Shaker, the terminal tower was built by the brothers.

It started out as a small stop at public square but turned into Cleveland Union Train Terminal.

You can still see interurban stations along the Shaker Rapid line.

The Coventry Station opened on December 17th, 1913, along what was to become Shaker Boulevard.

Built to serve passengers, making other connections to different lines.

Built by standard oil of Ohio, it also had two gas pumps.

The Linfield Station opened April 11th, 1920, as the final stop of the South Moorland line.

The station would not see growth around the area for over a decade.

It was part of the Van Sweringens' most successful rail suburbs in America.

- Van Sweringens built that line and that line was going to continue on eastward through Gates Mills, in fact, part of that land there today is still designated, they were going to put lines through there and connect with the Cleveland and Eastern, that was the idea.

But a number of things happened during the 1920s.

One of them, the Cleveland and Eastern went out of business on March 31st, 1925.

The Terminal Tower was being built during that period of time.

The Cleveland Eastern had to move their offices because all of those buildings were raised on a public square to make room for The Terminal Tower.

The Van Sweringens wanted to connect with the C&E but the C&E went out of business.

By the time The Terminal Tower was finished, the Great Depression came and the Van Sweringens lost pretty much everything, and that ended the expansion of that line.

(train horn honks) - I hope we teach people that they missed out on a great era.

We hope that municipalities will understand that they made a mistake and, as they're doing in many cities, they're adding the street car lines back in.

They call 'em light rail vehicles now but they're still basically streetcars.

They're still the fundamental, simple electric propelled car running off electricity and not polluting.

(train bell rings) (train racketing) - We love trains.

- Yeah, love trains and love history.

- I think it is cool and I just like it.

- ... to see a piece of history, to see something old and experience that, like what life would've been like back in the day.

- It's really cool.

- [Narrator] A 100% volunteer organization, people donate their time and money.

Walt Stoner was one of the founders and is acting president.

- The Cleveland streetcars were yellow, but their idea of yellow was a whole lot different than we call yellow, think of brown mustard.

That was about the color of yellow that Cleveland streetcars were.

There were three paint schemes for the Shaker Rapid cars over the years.

Think of this car with the same base of pain scheme of the cream, the red windows, only where it's yellow they were green.

Those were the original Shaker Rapid cars.

Then during the depression, they came up with this paint scheme here which got dubbed "The Depression Paint Scheme", and later years that got too complicated so they just simply (mumbles) a yellow band, bright yellow band with gray above and below.

So my goal, we've got three of these cars, I'd like to see one done in each paint scheme.

- [Narrator] Most of the cars that the museum were part of the 201 cars built for the city of Cleveland's interurbans between 1913 and 1914.

Four of those streetcars went to what was to become the Shaker Rapid.

- Back in the city, they were having trouble with these cars because of the low center floor, like 12 has.

People would get on, they pay their fare, they get with their foot up to the step in the car, the car starts up and they fall backwards.

The streetcar system was getting lawsuits, broken legs, broken arms, so they changed the configuration and put this high floor in there.

And just basically it was just a safety (mumbles) difference.

- [Narrator] Peter Witt, the transportation commissioner of Cleveland came up with a new design for the cars.

- Well the big difference with the Peter Witt car is he created what he called the pay as you pass system.

The conductor and the Peter Witt car was still in the back here, right in front of the back door.

People could jammed in the front of the car, you know, standing room only in the front of car.

They don't have to worry about paying a fair until they passed the conductor.

So that Peter Witt car had longitudinal seats in the front, making it uncomfortable, and the better seats in the back, so it kind of encouraged people to pay their fair and, you know, go sit in the more comfortable seats in the back.

(coins clatters) (gentle music) - [Narrator] In the early 1900s, you could just about get anywhere on the interurbans.

- Transportation back then connected everyone, nobody was left out of the equation back then.

Again, you could travel on a passenger train, on the B&O, all the way to Cleveland or across the country, during that period of time.

You could transfer from the interurban right here in Chardon or in Burton, get on the B&O train, go to Niagara Falls, go anywhere around the country you wanted to go.

(gentle music) (car stutters) - But then the next motor transportation came along and that was the automobile, that kind of ended the success of the interurban.

1920 interurban was king, 1930 it was being scrapped.

- The nation changed, everything changes.

The trolleys really weren't able to keep up in terms of maintenance and safety.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) They were operating out of the fair box and land uses changed very fast, people started to move to the suburbs because the highways were built and homes were made more affordable because of government subsidies, highways were built because of subsidies, and the trains, rail lines, and buses just couldn't keep up.

Some of the housing patterns and some of the road patterns in the suburbs were not conducive to either rail or bus, and as a result people stopped riding transit, and we lost a lot of this.

- He was the best, absolutely the best.

- [Narrator] Dorothy's grandfather, Sam Cahill, was the conductor on the last run to Gates Mills in 1925.

- He enjoyed that though, I know he did.

He was very social, you know, he talked to everybody that got on.

That's how he met my grandmother, she got on at one of the stops, her and her sisters were coming out here.

I bet he felt depressed, I really do, 'cause I think he enjoyed that.

(train horn honks) - [Narrator] There may also be some more sinister reasons for the interurban shutdown, from 1938 through 1950 national city lines, with an investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California gained control of transit systems in 25 cities.

In 1949, five corporations were found guilty of trying to monopolize sales of buses to local transit systems.

In 1942, the city of Cleveland took over the transit system.

- After they took it over, city council voted to remove the trolley system and put in buses.

When the mayor left office he got a GMC truck dealership offered to him, and one of the city councilmen became his head salesman of buses.

So there was a lot of politics that comes into play here, but the interurban and trolley system was voted out and removed to replace it with buses.

- [Narrator] The depression and societal changes helped bring on the demise of the streetcar.

(streetcar bell rings) - If the environmental movement would've, was started sooner, we'd still have three cars running because three cars are clean, there's no pollution.

Yes, there's a powerhouse somewhere that's still producing electricity, but it's easier to control the pollution coming outta one powerhouse as it is trying to control the pollution coming outta 10,000 cars.

- During the period of 20th century, people could go from, say, Warren, Middlefield, Chardon.

You could board an interurban car and travel to Indiana, to Michigan.

Many people went on their honeymoon to Niagara Falls from right here in Chardon, Ohio.

You can't do that today.

They had mass transit 100 years ago but all of that has been removed, so people are not really as modern today as they were a century ago.

(gentle upbeat music) (upbeat bluesy music) (upbeat bluesy music continues) (upbeat bluesy music continues)