July 20, 2001: Portland Streetcar Service Begins

Portland’s first streetcar, horse-drawn, glided along First Street in 1872 (The Oregonian, 20-July-2011). For the next several decades streetcars thrived. Streetcars became ubiquitous in, and necessary to, the city’s expansion – neighborhoods like Council Crest, Hawthorne, and Irvington began as streetcar suburbs. But you know the rest of the story. Cars and buses took over, and in 1950 Portland’s last streetcars ceased operation.

That is, until July 20, 2001, when the new Portland Streetcar debuted, carrying passengers between the Good Samaritan Hospital in Northwest Portland to Portland State University in Southwest.