Indiana Historical Society

Page 1 2 3
Download full essay

Interurbans and the Growth of Indianapolis
I suggest that a second major urban area affected in a more lasting way by the interurbans was in Indianapolis. Indiana, together with Ohio, had what was virtually a statewide system of interurban lines. Focusing on Indianapolis at the center of the state, with no less than a dozen important routes radiating from the downtown Traction Terminal, this interurban system made the city one of the greatest interurban centers in America and gave Indianapolis unparalleled advantages as a regional center.

The interurbans brought people to Indianapolis to shop and to enjoy the advantages of a big city. The fast, frequent express and freight services operated from the interurban freight terminal on Kentucky Avenue were at the center of a network of twenty-five interurban lines that provided fast freight service to points throughout most of Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio as well as northern Kentucky and points in western New York and Pennsylvania. This freight network helped Indianapolis become a major regional wholesale and distribution center.
Between the census of 1900 and that of 1910 Indianapolis grew by 38 percent, while St. Louis grew by only 19 percent. Commenting on this, the St. Louis Republic had this to say:

A number of railroad systems are managed from St. Louis—not one road of any size from Indianapolis. St. Louis lies just across the Mississippi from the greatest deposit of good steam coal adjacent to any American city; Indianapolis gets its coal from a considerable distance. St. Louis has a river channel connecting it with the sea; Indianapolis has no navigable water. St. Louis is located on rolling hills of great scenic beauty and giving ideal drainage; Indianapolis is as flat as a top of a dinner table. St. Louis is far from any competing large city; Indianapolis achieved its remarkable growth within 183 miles of Chicago. St. Louis has two important universities; Indianapolis has none. St. Louis is a wealthy city; Indianapolis has almost no large fortunes. St. Louis is the world's center in a number of lines of manufacture; Indianapolis has many small, prosperous shops, but few large ones.

But fast interurban trolley lines have made it easy for the people within a circle of 250 miles in diameter to visit Indianapolis. In the streets of this capital, the man from Fort Wayne rubs elbows with the man from Terre Haute; the shopper from Columbus meets her old school friend from Logansport. A trolley map of Indiana looks like the spokes of a wheel whose hub is the city of Indianapolis. A city without great wealth, without large industries, without a university, without navigable water, without coal, without natural beauty of site, has grown because it made it easy for its neighbors for a hundred miles around to drop in before dinner by trolley car, and leaving after an early supper, to get home by bed time.17

Although the interurbans are gone, Indianapolis continues to enjoy these commercial advantages, served today by a radial system of interstate and other major highways that closely parallel the routes of the old interurbans.

Notes

1. Samuel E. Moffett, “The War on the Locomotive: The Marvelous Development of the Trolley Car System,” McClure’s Magazine 20 (Mar. 1903): 453.
2. Chicago Tribune, 11 Sept. 1907. A series on interurbans ran in the Tribune from 3–11 Sept. 1907.
3. Moffett, “War on the Locomotive,” 460.
4. Ibid., 452, 462.
5. Chicago Tribune, 11 Sept. 1907.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 3 Sept. 1907.
8. Adele Marie Shaw, “Electricity in Farm-Life: The Story of an Agricultural Revolution,” Harper’s Weekly 51 (19 Jan. 1907): 104.
9. Ibid.
10. John R. Graham, address to the 1914 convention of the American Electric Railway Association.
11. Quoted in Transit Journal 78 (Sept. 1934): 328.
12. Shaw, “Electricity in Farm-Life,” 104.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Chicago Tribune, 3 Sept. 1907.
16. Quoted in Spencer Crump, Ride the Big Red Cars: How Trolleys Helped Build Southern California (: Crest Publications, 1962), 52.
17. St. Louis Republic, 1915 (month and day unknown).