The Trolley Barn at Fort Missoula, Montana
The Historical Museum of Fort Missoula’s Trolley Barn hosts Streetcar #50, which once ran on Missoula’s interurban trolley line.
The Fort Missoula museum sits at the outskirts of Montana’s second largest city, also named Missoula. Among this repository of historical buildings and artifacts is a reconstructed streetcar holding facility. This trolley barn houses Streetcar #50, a decommissioned trolley car that once operated on the interurban line from Missoula to the nearby sawmill company town of Bonner.
Missoula’s streetcar history began in 1890 with horse-drawn carriages on steel rails. Electric streetcars came to Missoula in 1893, operating alongside the horse-drawn lines. Many people, including university students, came to rely on the streetcar, so when this early attempt ended in 1897 after the Missoula city council removed the streetcar tracks, they were left without a means of mass transit.
In the 1900s, the debate over bringing a new street railway to Missoula captured public attention. Publications like the Daily Missoulian enthusiastically expressed their optimism that Missoula would see an electric trolley again soon. All the city needed to get construction underway was money, which ex-Senator William Clark, an eccentric entrepreneur making enormous profits in copper mining in Butte, was more than happy to provide. Clark’s Missoula Street Railway Company incorporated in February 1909, beginning construction shortly thereafter. The Daily Missoulian issued frequent reports on the Company’s incremental progress. Finally, on May 12, 1910, the streetcars were ready for service.
Missoula’s streetcar was a technically accomplished system. In 1921, the Street Railway Company installed an automated signaling system, the first of its kind in Montana. In addition to the intra-city network, the interurban line was also novel - Streetcar #50 and its counterparts required only one operator at the helm. Within their first two years of operation, Missoula’s trolleys ferried two and a half million passengers over an accumulated distance of one million miles; at their peak, the trolley system operated ten cars over twenty-one miles of track spanning from destinations within Missoula to nearby cities like Bonner, around seven miles away.
Despite its efficiency and public adoration, however, Missoula’s trolleys soon faced an insurmountable challenge. Since Montana first started licensing them in 1913, the production and purchase of automobiles had increased dramatically. As more people started driving, the streets became crowded, and passenger numbers fell to financially unsustainable levels. On January 24, 1932, the city decommissioned the last trolley car in Missoula. Bus service began the following day. They sold Streetcar #50 to various buyers, often used as temporary housing. In 1974, it was donated to the Historical Museum of Fort Missoula. A grassroots campaign saved it from being sold off in 1993, allowing it to be refurbished and exhibited. Today, Streetcar #50 and its car barn are all that remains of Missoula’s streetcar system.
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