The Woodland Park Electric Line
Promoter Guy C. Phinney announces plans for a grand, double-tracked electric rail line to connect Pioneer Place to his private park.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Guy C. Phinney filed a petition yesterday for the privilege of locating and maintaining a system of electric street railways from Pioneer Place to Woodland Park. The proposed route commences at Front Street, at the south line of Cherry, and runs through Yesler Avenue, Terrace Street, North Fourth, and several other streets to terminate at the entrance of Woodland Park. Mr. Phinney represents that he is the owner of Woodland Park and has already expended $170,000 in improving it, with plans for at least $120,000 more in the next year. He described his plans for high-end transit: five miles of double-tracked road, elegant stations with electric heaters, and cars featuring plate glass windows and plush upholstery. He expects to begin construction within twenty days of securing the franchise and be ready for operation by July 1.
“I shall have the best overhead construction in existence. The trolley wire will be in sections of one mile each, fed by a main supply wire, so that the current will be of equal power all along.”
Phinney’s Woodland Park would eventually become Seattle’s beloved public zoo, though his private rail vision highlights how early transit in Seattle was often a speculative play by wealthy landowners to increase the value of their property. Today, the struggle to build and fund reliable, high-quality public transit remains a central, unresolved tension in Seattle’s growth.
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