In 1886, Montgomery became the first city in the Western Hemisphere to electrify its entire streetcar system. It was a feat of technology and innovation for the Capitol City. The so-called “Lightning Route” helped spur development of several suburbs.
Canadian-born J. A. Gaboury brought mule-drawn streetcars to Montgomery in 1885. Having successfully created a streetcar system in Columbus, Georgia, he petitioned Montgomery officials for permission to lay tracks along the public streets. The Capital City Street Railway Co. was born, a public-private partnership befitting the rapidly approaching modern age.
Stockholders in the company included early electrical provider Thomas Foster and Josiah Morris, the financier largely responsible for the development of Birmingham. E. B. Joseph, a local banker and member of the city council, served as the railway company’s president. The mule-powered streetcar system, nicknamed “Jingle Bells,” began service in April 1885.
Later that year Gaboury met Charles Van Depoele, a Belgian cabinetmaker who had created a streetcar powered by electricity. Gaboury returned to Montgomery and received permission to modify his new railway line for electric power. Van Depoele agreed to install and supervise the new system.
During the early weeks of 1886, 25-foot power poles set 100 feet apart rose throughout downtown Montgomery. The company ordered new streetcars equipped with “dynamo electric machine” engines. Montgomery would soon have a mode of transportation “powered by lightning,” wrote a local editor.
Van Depoele tested his new system over several moonlit April nights while the expectant citizens of Montgomery were sleeping. In the light of day, the company worked to allay public fears over safety. Electricity on such a scale was still relatively new to Alabama. “There is more real danger, ten to one, in a Texas mule’s heels than in all the electric motor system,” wrote an expert hired to reassure the citizenry.
Service began on April 15, 1886. “The electric street railway in Montgomery is a success,” boasted the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser. He encouraged all doubters and pessimists to continue with their mule-powered perambulations. The electrified routes along three busy downtown streets — Commerce, Court and Dexter — each ran for 16 hours a day. More streets were soon added, eventually totaling 15 miles of track.
The railway company’s two-story powerhouse on Tallapoosa Street operated a massive steam-powered generator that daily consumed more than 3,000 pounds of coal. For a few months, mule-drawn streetcars operated alongside the new machines. On June 22, 1887, the company completed the switch to a fully electric fleet. Gaboury and Van Depoele soon departed to replicate the system in other cities.
While there were occasional accidents along the Lightning Route, none had more potentially historic consequences than what happened on July 25, 1887, near the Alabama Capitol. An electrified guide wire broke loose and fell into the street, directly in front of a fine white horse pulling a carriage along Dexter Avenue. The poor animal stepped on the cable and was electrocuted. The two passengers thrown from the carriage narrowly avoided a similar fate themselves. This was providential, indeed, considering one of the men was Gov. Thomas Seay.
Although the governor made light of the accident, it was no laughing matter. “The incident came very near [to] depriving Alabama of her able and most efficient governor,” wrote one Alabama editor. Contrite company executives instituted new safety precautions and reimbursed Gov. Seay for the loss of his mare.
A greater calamity befell the company the following year. On the night of June 30, 1888, fire engulfed the powerhouse, destroying the generator and most of the parked streetcar fleet. Losses were estimated at $40,000 (roughly $1.4 million today). With an insurance payout far short of that total, the company took time to recover. That meant temporarily reverting to mules to power the five remaining streetcars. Eighty beasts of burden were purchased for the task.
Executives faced a steep hill. Stockholders bolted. In 1889, the company changed hands and was renamed the Montgomery Terminal and Street Railway Co. Electrified service did not begin to return until 1892. By the time the last mule-drawn cars were replaced two years later, a complex system of rail lines served a sprawling Montgomery and its population of 50,000 with newly developed suburbs like Highland Park and Cloverdale.
No single company could meet the demand of Montgomery’s rapidly growing population. The creators of the Lightning Route may have been first, but they soon found the landscape rather crowded. Several of the larger concerns, including the successor to the original Capital City Street Railway Co., combined in 1906 under the name Montgomery Traction Co. Years of competition and gamesmanship between the various streetcar companies eventually left them all in financial trouble.
Enter the Alabama Power Co.
With Montgomery’s electricity, water and streetcar companies all facing dire financial futures, Alabama Power purchased them all in 1923, absorbing some $2 million in combined debt. Alabama Power continued operation of the streetcar lines for a decade of uninterrupted service.
By the early 1930s, however, the rising number of automobiles had reduced the demand. As revenues fell, service along certain routes was discontinued.
In December 1935, regular public bus service came to Montgomery. Like the lumbering mules five decades earlier, electric streetcars suddenly seemed like a remnant of a passing era. A few weeks later, the city council and Alabama Public Service Commission granted Alabama Power permission to abandon the street railway system.
Montgomery and Alabama Power sent the Lightning Route out in style. On March 8, 1936, the final day of service, rides along the original route were offered free of charge. At Court Square, a crowd of 2,500 gathered to say goodbye to the service. Once the speeches and rides were concluded, many of the people who assembled to bid a fond farewell to the Lightning Route departed the square on one of Montgomery’s new city buses. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut might say.
Today, visitors to Montgomery’s Riverwalk can see a restored streetcar that once traversed the Lightning Route. This bright-yellow vehicle provides a glimpse of transportation history along a busy, always changing landscape.
Historian Scotty E. Kirkland is a freelance contributor to Business Alabama. He lives in Wetumpka.
This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Business Alabama.
