What happened to SLO’s old streetcars? Inside the many lives of ‘Old No. 1’
In the late 19th century, the solution to every transportation problem was “build a railroad.”
The narrow gauge Pacific Coast Railway was built in the 1870s between Port Harford, San Luis Obispo and eventually Los Olivos.
It was designed to be a feeder line to steamships, but their depot was on the far south end of town at South and Higuera streets.
On a rainy day, that was a mile of mud to plod from the courthouse and the train.
The solution was another railroad: the San Luis Street Railway.
It was a horse-drawn trolley that eventually also connected downtown with the 1894 arrival of the Southern Pacific and luxury Ramona Hotel. The giant establishment was located near the present day Johnson Avenue between Marsh and Higuera streets.
Service ran for 21 years and faded as paved roads and automobiles arose.
According to a Times Past column by historian Dan Krieger on June 16, 1984, only one of the original cars survived.
He quotes an Elliot Curry column from Sept. 2, 1966, that said four of the cars were cobbled into a San Luis Obispo house.
George P. Bell owned the last car, inherited from his father, Herbert, the last owner of the streetcar equipment.
Knott’s Berry Farm made an offer to buy the old car, but Bell wanted the history to stay in the county and eventually it was restored and can be seen today on the grounds of the San Luis Obispo History Center’s Dallidet Adobe.
On May 17, 1949, the future of the car was still not assured and the Telegram-Tribune published this story by Robert Bander. Some of the details differ slightly from Curry’s and Krieger’s later articles.
Old No. 1 Comes Home for Fiesta
The gala Fiesta de las Flores parade next Saturday will be just one more event in the utility-filled life of the “Number One” horse-drawn streetcar of the old San Luis Obispo Street Railway.
Now being spruced up by the Cabrillo club under the direction of Bill Wahl, the outmoded trolley car will be the Cabrillo float, complete with a festoon of colorful flowers and a horse to pull it — if a breaking device can be located.
The historic streetcar knows the ups and downs of San Luis Obispo streets much better than anyone who will be watching it in this week’s parade. It started service in the town toward the end of 1800(s) as part of the transportation fleet owned by Banker John P. Andrews.
“Number One” was a one-horse streetcar, ant there were five other trolleys, which required two horses to pull them, constituting the mobile equipment of Andrews’ streetcar line.
Resting Place
When these streetcars were retired from service in 1906, “Number One” found its adventuresome life just beginning. Along with five cars, it was purchased by Herbert F. Bell, a Southern Pacific locomotive engineer.
Bell, who was the engineer on President McKinley’s train when it toured California in 1901, is now a shipper 84 years old and living in Oakland. He was pensioned in 1936, and the custody of old “Number One” fell to his son, George Bell, on whose land is the Rinconada quicksilver mine in Santa Margarita. It was the younger Bell who recently gave the Cabrillo club permission to cart the relic back to San Luis Obispo from his Carissa Plains ranch where it has been for two years.
But when the century was still young, and the not-so-old streetcar was formerly “retired,” Herbert Bell had an immediate use for it and its discarded fellows.
The five two-horse trolleys were taken up to Santa Barbara street and put together to form a bungalow where Bell later lived with his wife. And “Number One” was planed down by the tracks across from the San Luis Obispo roundhouse as a trailer house for Engineer Bell.
During overnight stopovers from his duty at the throttles of the Daylight Limited and the Lark, Bell would find “Number One” a great asset. In it was a pull-down bed, light cooking equipment and storage space. He estimated that over the years the discarded trolley saved him from $6,000 to $7,000 in hotel bills.
When he stepped down from his last locomotive, Bell turned the faithful trolley over to Porter’s museum on lower Marsh street, where it remained for many years. During this period it was pressed back briefly into service, as it will be next week, in a Fiesta Parade.
But Porter died two years ago, and “Number One,” no longer a street car, or trailer, or even a museum exhibit, was carted to George Bell’s ranch where it was placed between two gaslight poles in the hills above the Salinas dam.
No graveyard for this streetcar, however, for it suddenly became a twofold sentimental value for the Bells three years ago when their daughter, the granddaughter of the railroad engineer who purchased the retired horse-drawn streetcar, married the great-grandson of J.P. Andrews, the man who first brought “Number One” into service on his car line in San Luis Obispo.
Gaining in Value
George Bell has presented his daughter, now Mrs. Calvin W. Andrews, the trolley which has been gathering importance over the years like a snowball rolling downhill. The young Andrews’ will take it to their ranch at Pozo, where they raise turkeys, and it will be incorporated into a patio they will build, thus completing a historical circle of many decades.
But before “Number One” takes on the new guise of a patio, it will have a resplendent airing in the 1949 Fiesta de las Flores under the Cabrillo club banner.
Somewhat dilapidated when they set it on the lot at 415 Dana street for consideration, the car has been given a splendid face lifting by Cabrillo members, which includes an added front and back platform, a canopy and wheels.
Considerable time has been spent on restoring the car by Wahl’s Cabrillo club committee which includes Manuel Lopez, B.J. Epperly, Joe Quaresma and Joaquin Pereira. They were especially surprised to discover that the printing on the side of the trolley, which reads “San Luis Obispo Street Railway,” was plainly visible. The mass of flowers which will bedeck “Number One” will carefully be framed around old gilt of these words.
For the antiquated title gives the warped and homely trolley a special distinction in the company of so many snorting, whippersnapper Johnny-come-lately’s powered by cylinders and carburetors and the like.
“Number One” has survived many uses and abuses to become the center of public attention once more. What it will become when its service as a patio is over there is no telling. But whether it is set up as a hot dog stand in Avila or raised into a tree-top as a Tarzan-like abode for some youngsters, it seems safe to predict that “Number One” will retain its position as one of the historical indestructibles of San Luis Obispo county.
