Detroit's first manufacturing boom during the Civil War created a demand for mass transit. While rail and waterborne connections into Detroit were numerous, residents relied on footpower to get around the embryonic city. Only the wealthy could afford t heir own horse, and horsedrawn taxis were in short supply besides being economically inaccessible to the average worker. Further, the wheels of the carriages tore up the dirt roads, particularly in Michigan's soggy seasons: spring, winter and fall.
Densely-populated southeastern England had developed its horsecar system under similar conditions in the 1840's. Horses pulled metal-wheeled carriages along light-gauge rails set into existing roads. This set-up assured that the carriages could roll in any conditions and had the additional benefit of reducing road maintenance costs.
Following this progressive Victorian example, in 1863 Detroit's civic leaders helped establish private franchises to build and operate horsecar lines along the city's busiest streets. By the mid-1880's, all the major avenues radiating from Campus Martius were served by horsecars.
While the horsecar system did establish regularly-scheduled and reliable mass transit, it did have its drawbacks. The cars were slow, and horses were expensive and short-lived in such heavy service. At least twice during the thirty-year horsecar era, the whole city was shut down when equine epidemics decimated the horse population. The unheated cars were comfortable enough in the summer but miserable in Michigan's frigid winters. Riders could nestle their icy feet in the straw scattered on the floors of the cars, but the straw quickly became a slushy mess more likely to convey the cold rather than insulate against it.
The car seen here is an open car from the
Fort Wayne and Elmwood Railway which ran the lines that went out Fort
Street and West Jefferson towards Elmwood Cemetery. Open cars, operated
only in the summer, were popular with riders who preferred them to the
more common all-season carriages that were somewhat dark and
claustrophobic.
Long before electric streetcars became feasible in the late 1880's, horsecar operators had sought a replacement for the horse. The famed cable cars of San Francisco (which operate on a continuously running cable under the street) were an earlier solution, but one that was never used in Detroit because of excessive cost.
Street rail operators enthusiastically embraced the new electric cars in 1888, and the last horsecars rolled in Detroit in 1896, only eight years later. But, they had set the pattern of urbanization that would continue in Detroit until the automobile broke the populace of its dependence on mass transit.