Horse cars: the first company, 1885

1885–1890s · THE HORSE-CAR ERA

The charter and the first car: The South Bend Railway Company was chartered on 18 January 1885 — the date the Trains section records from the state's own journal — and streetcar service in South Bend began that spring on Washington Street. The electric railway historians' account fixes the inauguration precisely: on 27 May 1885 a small single-truck horse car, painted black and white, was operated on Washington Street by the South Bend Railway Company to open streetcar service in the city. The transit corporation that descends from the company counts its own founding a shade differently — 25 May 1885 is the date Transpo's published history carries, and the date from which the corporation reckons its lineage — and both dates are carried here as the record gives them: the company's own anniversary on the 25th, the historians' first car on the 27th.

Two companies, two banks of the river: The South Bend Railway worked the city's own streets. The second horse-car enterprise looked outward from the start: the South Bend & Mishawaka Street Railway Company built two lines between South Bend and Mishawaka, one on each side of the St. Joseph River — in those days the two towns were separated by open country, and the horse cars ran in a rural setting along the side of the road. ChicagoRailFan's route record dates the intercity company's operation of its "North Side" and "South Side" routes from 1885 to 1889, with the South Bend Railway operating the city's other streetcar routes alongside. The horse-car era in South Bend was therefore brief but double: a city company on Washington Street and its sisters, and an intercity company feeling its way down both banks of the river toward a neighbor that would share the city's transit fate for the next century and a half. Mishawaka is a separate city with its own future build; her lines enter this record only because one company ran both cities' cars, which it did from the beginning.

Sources:

1. The Trains section of this history — the South Bend Railway Company's charter of 18 January 1885, from the Documentary Journal of the Indiana General Assembly.
2. Central Electric Railfans' Association, Electric Railways of Indiana (Bulletin 104, 1960), South Bend narrative — the horse car of 27 May 1885 on Washington Street; the South Bend & Mishawaka Street Railway's two lines, one on each side of the river.
3. The South Bend Public Transportation Corporation's published history, as compiled in the CPTDB transit record — the corporation's founding date of 25 May 1885.
4. ChicagoRailFan, South Bend transit routes — the South Bend & Mishawaka Street Railway's North Side and South Side routes, 1885–1889, and the South Bend Railway's city routes.
5. George K. Bradley, Northern Indiana Railway Inc., CERA Bulletin 132 (1998), published summary — the intercity horse cars running through open country beside the road.