Shipping magnate John D. Spreckels used his wealth to build great hotels, expand transportation facilities, establish a business district and to develop San Diego\u2019s cultural features. One of those features was an elaborate seaside and bayside resort at Mission Beach.\u00a0An area was selected in 1922 for an amusement center, dance casino, bath house with a plunge, provisions for surf bathing, concessions, a roller coaster and a miniature San Diego & Arizona Railway system. Three years later, the carnival-like amusement center, later known as Belmont Park, opened to considerable public interest with its tent city, much like that near Spreckels\u2019 Del Coronado Hotel.\u00a0 The question of obtaining adequate transportation for larger crowds was brought to the builder\u2019s attention.\u00a0 Since he operated the ever-expanding San Diego Electric Car Co., why not establish a streetcar line? First, a shuttle service with two old street cars was installed from the Ocean Beach line to a track from the defunct Bay Shore Railroad Company.\u00a0 This included a bridge across the channel that had been built in 1914. \u00a0 Eventual plans called for a new electric railroad line from Kearny Boulevard and Broadway in San Diego all the way to Mission Beach.\u00a0 The bridge was restructured to accommodate \u00a0the consistent travel. On\u00a0 Sept. 8, 1923, the San Diego City Council accepted the bid of the San Diego Electric Railway for the new line. \u00a0 In doing so, Spreckels had\u00a0 given San Diego one of the finest electric streetcar systems in the country for a town its size. “It was just plain business sense,” Spreckels would reflect. “The city would not grow without an abundant water supply and adequate streetcar facilities.” \u00a0 People in La Jolla, without rail transportation since the folding of the Los Angeles-San Diego Beach Railway, clamored for electric trains and a line extension.\u00a0 The old railway tracks were used to reach La Jolla\u2019s Fay and Prospect streets. \u00a0 An attractive building was built at La Jolla Hermosa for the San Carlos substation.\u00a0 Following the construction of the Ocean Beach substation building \u2014 with Egyptian design \u2014 a similar one was erected in Mission Beach. With the opening of the new line to the beaches, service via the Point Loma Railroad\u00a0 to Voltaire Street in Ocean Beach was abandoned. That section of the line would be served by buses starting in 1938. What had become an interurban line in 1924 to Mission Beach and La Jolla ended dismally on Sept. 16, 1940. Automobile traffic from an expanding population slowed this rapid transit to a crawl. The streetcars were too heavy, slow, complicated and noisy.\u00a0 La Jolla\u2019s terminal was razed, the elaborate over-crossing tresses were torn down and all the rails removed except those in paved streets.\u00a0 A few lines remained in other parts of the city until 1948.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shipping magnate John D. Spreckels used his wealth to build great hotels, expand transportation facilities, establish a business district and to develop San Diego\u2019s cultural features. One of those features was an elaborate seaside and bayside resort at Mission Beach.\u00a0An area was selected in 1922 for an amusement center, dance casino, bath house with a […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":260009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Streetcars in La Jolla","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}