The Start of a Legend

On January 17, 1871, San Franciscan Andrew Smith Hallidie patented the first cable car, ultimately sparing many horses the excruciating work of moving people over that city's steep roadways. Using metal ropes he had patented, Hallidie devised a mechanism by which cars were drawn by an endless cable running in a slot between the rails which passed over a steam-driven shaft in the powerhouse.

After gathering financial backing, Hallidie and his associates constructed the first cable railway. The track ran from the intersection of Clay and Kearny Streets along twenty-eight hundred feet of track to the crest of a hill 307 feet above the starting point. At five o'clock on the morning of August 1, 1873, a few nervous men climbed aboard the cable car as it stood on the hilltop. With Hallidie at the controls, the car descended and arrived safely at the bottom.