Streetcars and Trolleys

Timeline of the Streetcar At KU

Though the era of the streetcar at KU wouldn't begin until 1910, plans were discussed in 1903 for the construction of a system which would have resulted in a far different campus than the one known today. Designed to tunnel underneath Mt. Oread, with an entrance around what is now Marvin Hall, the line would have encircled Mt. Oread with planned real estate developments along the way. The idea was quickly scrapped as University officials put a stop to it, fearing it would limit campus's westward expansion.

The closing down of the previously mentioned plan meant there was still space for a street car line, and, in 1910 the KU Loop first summited Mt. Oread, beginning a 23-year period of providing a necessary service to the students of KU.

The KU Loop remained a staple of campus transportation until the 1920s, as buses began replacing streetcars around Lawrence, and finally closed its services in the fall of 1933.

The Streetcar's Route

From 1910 to 1933, KU students were transported around campus by a system which would be utterly unrecognizable today, the street car. Known as the "KU Loop", it reached the top of Mt. Oread between Bailey and Strong Halls, cut across the hill, and worked its way through Lawrence, eventually reaching 8th street, the central location of the three streetcar routes which served Lawrence. The KU Loop's pathway through campus may be seen in the map below.

Interaction with the Streetcar

Streetcars are often remembered with nostalgic feeling, but it is important to acknowledge the negative effects, as well as the positive, which they provided to the people who used their services.

Certainly, streetcars are deserving of some nostalgia, as they provided numerous benefits to those in and around KU. They offered employment to some and crucial transportation to all, while also providing a medium for creative student pranks. Students would steal the K and U from the street car fronts and, those who wished to cause a little more chaos, would grease the tracks going up the hill. Streetcars were also crucial in other KU traditions, providing transportation during campus wide events such as nightshirt parades (nightshirt parade goers pictured below).

Nostalgia alone does not offer a complete vision of the past, as the streetcar service had several downsides. One, simply by virtue of its design, is that if a streetcar were to stall or break down in front of another, a collision would inevitably occur. Cars were often forced to collide if they found another stuck in ice or snow.

Student interaction also had a dangerous side, as nights of celebration occasionally ended in injury, which happened to two nightshirt paraders who collided with a streetcar.

The most serious, and most rare, downside of the streetcar service was that of death. Though death is a serious downside in all modes of transportation, streetcars provide a particularly brutal way to go. Rare, but lethal instances of injury were outcomes that drivers were especially wary of. John I. Long, a motorman-conductor at KU from 1927 to 1932, once commented: “If somebody stopped on the tracks in front of you, you couldn’t turn, you couldn’t stop, you had to hit them. All we could do was hope that we didn’t hurt somebody.”