Trolley Museum Memories
On Saturday, November 20th, 1965, a Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Museum’s first trolley car house was held at the site in Northwest Branch Regional Park which would become the original site of our Museum (where the ICC now crosses Bonifant Rd).
The ceremony included speeches by Mills Dean III (NCTM President), the Rev Robert C. Curry (Univ. of MD), William E. Coyle (Member, Board of Education, Montgomery County), John P. Hewitt (Director of Parks, MNPCC), Jay N. Price (Director of Economic Development for Montgomery County. The dedication address was given by Mrs. Edna P. Cook, Montgomery County delegate to the Maryland National Assembly. In her speech she shared some anecdotes, including one about horse-drawn streetcars she had witnessed herself when she was growing up in Ohio. The following is a brief excerpt from her speech, as published in the Headway Recorder from Summer 1966:
“I grew up in the great Miami valley of Ohio on a farm about three miles from the city of Middletown Ohio which was the site of the great Armco rolling mills - the rust proof iron company. In my freshman year in high school I rode an interurban car to the high school. I can still remember the old clickity-clack of that interurban car as it took me along toward high school. Soon after that, the advent of the automobile and other progress in transportation put it out of business, at least in our area, and it ran only on the mainline from Cincinnati to Dayton. So we saw progress even in those earlier days because I’m quite a bit older than most of you here and I’m not ashamed to admit it! I remember very distinctly that in front of our high school there was a transportation line - a streetcar line - which ran from the B & O Depot in the west end of Middletown to the Big Four depot in the East End of town. The rail track at that time had one of the two existing horse drawn cars. I can remember that old car as the horses pulled it past the high school. There was a slight rise in front of the high school. On one trip it passed the high school around noon time and some boys - I guess they’d be called delinquents now - used to stand out on the front steps of the high school and as the car came past, they’d yell “Whoa, Whoa”. Then the old horses would stop and the poor motorman ( I guess you would call him a motorman although there wasn’t any motor) would have difficulty getting the horses started again. Of course, after he’d whip them a little bit and get them started up this little grade, the boys would again yell “Whoa”. So you see they had their good times during those early days.
As I said I grew up on a farm. Right at the edge of our farm was the Miami at Erie canal on which there were barges that brought supplies to the grocery stores along the line and particularly to the paper mills located along that canal. My grandfather used to tell me that these barges were ones pulled by mules but in my day they had built track along the old mule towpath. On this track there was a trolley that pulled the barges, and they called this trolley the electric mule. So that was another innovation”…
The ceremony ended with Mrs Cook breaking ground by “spading the first shovelful”.
Mrs. Edna P. Cook giving the dedication address during the Groundbreaking Ceremony on Nov 20, 1965. Note the fare collection box in front of Mr. John Hewitt, Director of Parks, with Mills Dean III standing to his right.
Master John J. Kiesel, aged 5, turns a shovel to assist in the Groundbreaking.
Onlookers Left to Right: unknown, Jay Price, William Coyle, Edna P. Cook, John P. Hewitt
