Fun Fare

Fun Fare. Big Island and Wildwood. , For longer distances, travelers could ride the "Motor Line", a hybrid of a horse car and train, propelled by a steam locomotive. Tracks extended from downtown Minneapolis to Lake Calhoun by 1879, and reached Excelsior by 1881. Four years later, routes opened to Minnehaha Falls and down Nicollet Avenue to 50th Street. Residents along the tracks complained, though, that the locomotives were noisy and dirty. The service was not profitable and was abandoned in 1890., To lure customers to travel beyond the city limits, the Saint Paul and White Bear Railroad established Wildwood amusement park on the south shore of White Bear Lake in the 1890s. The park and railroad were acquired by the Twin City Rapid Transit Company, which had developed an amusement park on Big Island in Lake Minnetonka and a fleet of boats to ferry people around the lake., Residents from the Phillips neighborhood could easily reach either park by electric streetcar with only a transfer or two. By the early twentieth century, it took 42 minutes to go 12 miles from Lowertown Saint Paul to Wildwood or 18 miles from downtown Minneapolis to Excelsior. The trip was faster thanks to state-of-the-art tracks around Lake Harriet. Passengers were thrilled to go 60 miles and hour, in an era when automobiles averaged 15 miles an hour., The transit company's ads claimed that Big Island Park had the "Greenest Grass, Clearest Water, Loveliest Foliage." It "is reached by a delightful little voyage on the Ferries... Near the Docks is the Water Tower, a copy of the tower of Seville, Spain, 200 feet high." From How to See the Twin Cities, 1911 Credit: Minnesota Historical Society Collections, Wildwood offers, "everything in the way of clean, wholesome entertainment to make you forget your troubles." It "has the best bathing beach in the U.S. Northwest." From How to See the Twin Cities, 1911 Credit: Minnesota Historical Society Collections, Tracks extended from Lake Minnetonka to Stillwater by the early 1900s. Credit: How to See the Twin Cities (ca. 1911)/Minnesota Historical Society Collections., A conductor collects fares from passengers in the 1900s. Credit: The Minneapolis Journal