The Sunset Cutoff of the Red Car Trolley

This property map from the 1920s shows the Pacific Electric street car trackage along Ocean Avenue, connecting the Westgate line in Brentwood to the "Santa Monica Line" on Santa Monica Boulevard.

So, there’s this little park in Santa Monica. It’s right near the Volkswagen dealership on Santa Monica Boulevard near 26th Street. Anyway, the park is on a street named Park Drive. So the park is named, “Park Drive Park.”

There’s this riddle I liked as a kid: “Why do people drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?” Anyway, problem solved – right?

So there used to be this rail connector between what is now the Expo line and the trolley that used to run down Santa Monica Boulevard (the “Sawtelle Line”). It’s all gone, but it was well-documented in the maps of the time. The area was originally developed by Boehme et Crosier, a group of local real-estate developers.

The area seems well-documented — I’ve found seven original source maps for this research.

Published by Thomas Guy

Everybody dance. Everybody dance, now.

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