Throwback Thursday: The Week They Took Up Centerville’s Streetcar Track (Centerville, 1926)

One hundred years ago this week, the news took up two sentences in a local column. Under “Centerville Chats,” the Davis County Clipper of November 5, 1926 reported that the Utah Light & Traction Company had started taking up its track. Crews began “at the end of the line at Chase Park,” the paper said, and were working southward.

That was the quiet ending of the streetcar in south Davis County. It was also the last chapter of a fight that had been running all year.

A line that never paid its way

Utah Light & Traction held Davis County franchises dating to late 1912, according to company records summarized by the railroad history site UtahRails.net. Its timeline, citing the Ogden Standard, has service reaching Centerville on December 27, 1913. The company’s own 1926 petition remembered the line as going into service in 1912, so the two accounts differ by about a year.

A June 1918 station list on the same site shows 39 stops between the north edge of Salt Lake City and Centerville, passing through Luker, Bountiful and Cheney along the way.

By 1926 the line was in trouble. In a petition reported by the Clipper on January 29, the company asked the state utilities commission for permission to abandon everything north of the Salt Lake City limits and to remove the tracks and poles. The numbers it gave were hard to argue with. For 1925, the company said, the line took in $21,276.94 and cost $30,687.76 to run and maintain, a shortfall of $9,410.82. It also admitted to about $20,000 in maintenance it had put off.

The petition named its competition plainly: the faster and more frequent Bamberger electric trains, and privately owned automobiles.

Davis County pushes back

The request landed in the middle of a second hearing. The Bamberger company wanted permission to run its own passenger bus line between Salt Lake and Ogden, and the streetcar company tied its petition to that one. Davis County leaders, including the county commission chairman and the mayors of Centerville, Farmington and Layton, told the commission that existing service was adequate and the highway was already crowded.

A week later, the Clipper reported from the county commission meeting that people in the affected towns opposed Utah Light & Traction withdrawing from the county, and that a joint meeting with the company would be arranged.

The opposition did not stop the change. On September 17, the Clipper’s Bountiful column said company officials had been in town showing off one of the new buses that would run between Salt Lake and north Centerville in place of the streetcars. The utilities commission, the paper said, had granted the change and would let the company take up its track.

“A week of transitions”

It happened fast. The Clipper of September 24 reported that streetcars on the Bountiful-Centerville line had stopped running on Monday. On Wednesday at 2:20, the company shut down its Bountiful substation, which the paper said had been in use for twelve years. One longtime employee stayed on as watchman, while two others were transferred, one to Murray and one to a substation on West Temple in Salt Lake.

Further down the same column, the paper summed it up with a line that puts the moment in perspective. It had been “a week of transitions in Bountiful,” it said. The streetcar service had been abandoned, and the town had also held what the paper believed was the first fashion show in the county.

Buses took over the schedule. A notice in the October 1 paper laid out special service for conference Sunday, October 3. The regular bus would leave Centerville at 6:36 a.m. and keep its hourly schedule, and extra buses would run to meet the streetcars, including one by way of Val Verda. UtahRails.net, drawing on Motor Coach Age, describes the same arrangement: the replacement bus connected with the Route 22 Center Street trolleys at the new end of the track.

Then, in the first week of November, the crews reached for the rails.

What came after

The bus did not last forever either. According to the same UtahRails.net account, service was cut back to Bountiful by 1934, possibly earlier, which left Centerville to the Bamberger trains. For more stories like this one, visit the Centerville history page or browse all of our Davis County history.

Did anyone in your family ride the streetcar to Centerville, or tell stories about the old line? We would love to hear what got passed down.

Sources

• Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah), November 5, 1926, p. 1. Utah Digital Newspapers, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.
• Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah), October 1, 1926, p. 1. Utah Digital Newspapers, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.
• Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah), September 24, 1926, p. 5. Utah Digital Newspapers, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.
• Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah), September 17, 1926, p. 8. Utah Digital Newspapers, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.
• Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah), February 5, 1926, p. 1. Utah Digital Newspapers, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.
• Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah), January 29, 1926, p. 1. Utah Digital Newspapers, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.
• Utah Light & Railway timeline, June 1918 station list and franchise records, UtahRails.net.
• Motor Coach Age, as published on UtahRails.net.