[This Clipping has now returned – but not yet Warren posing with the repeat. Here, at least, is the text, and surprisingly it named the man holding the bundle of newspapers in the pix above.]
THE SEATTLE-EVERETT INTERURBAN
When the Seattle-Everett Interurban stopped running 50 years ago (Correction: it has now been 70 years, nearly.) it wasn’t with a whimper. Car No. 53 pulled into the Seattle depot on the evening of Feb. 20, 1939, loaded with passengers feeling peeved over the trolley line’s demise.
The Interurban ran on its own tracks south of Everett until it reached Seattle’s Northwest 85th Street where it crossed onto city tracks for its final run to the terminal here at Eighth and Steward. When the city started to pull up its trolley lines in 1939, the Interurban – its patronage increasingly depleted by new auto owners – had little choice but to call it quits.
Now on the golden anniversary (in 1989) of that forced retirement, the 30 years of the Seattle-Interurban’s service are recalled by Northwest rail enthusiast Warren Wing in his book, “To Seattle by Trolley.” In the contemporary photo (yet to be uncovered for this printing) Wing poses, book in hand, beside a Greyhound bound for Bellingham. The North Coast Line’s Interurban also reached Bellingham, although a bus was required between Everett and Mount Vernon, where the passengers transferred again to rail for the last leg to Bellingham some of it over a thrilling trestle below Chuckanut Drive. (We have n0w put up a pix of that “thrilling trestle” and you will find it “above” under “Chuckanut Drive & The Everett Interurban Trestle Below It.”)
Wing stands a few steps from the spot where in the historical scene dispatcher Delisle Manning prepares to hand over a bundle of Seattle Post-Intelligencers to Car No. 53’s motorman. Behind Manning, the North Coast Line’s Limited Seattle is cooling after a five-hour run form Portland on old Highway 99. Both scenes were photographed at what in 1939 was called the Central Stage Terminal and since the 40s the Greyhound Depot. The terminal was built in 1927.
TWO ADDS FOR COLMAN DOCK & THE FERRY FLEET
The ships would have been after WW2, as you had the “S(team)S(hip) Iroquois.” The Iroquois was the “Night Boat to Victoria” of the Black Ball Line. This would have also been before 1947, because the Kalakala is still the flagship (the M.S. Chinook, took over the “Night Boat” duties from the Iroquois, and the Flagship title from the M.S. Kalakala). Nice shots of the interurban trains too. I am a fan of the interurbans of Seattle. Thank you for this.