By Bob Hibbs
A
27-mile-long electric railway opened in 1904 offering hourly passenger service
from downtown Iowa City into central Cedar Rapids extinguished another rail
passenger route, but opened business, employment and student transportation.
“Swing
and sway the Crandic way” was a company promotion slogan and an affectionate
description used by riders.
As
was typical of thinking in two quite different communities, the Cedar Rapids
and Iowa City Railway entered local lexicon as “the interurban” in Iowa
City, but as “Crandic” in Cedar Rapids. It was an operating subsidiary of
the Iowa Railway and Light Company, which in 1932 became Iowa Electric Light
& Power Co.
That
company also operated street car service in Cedar Rapids, while Iowa City
street cars were owned by a separate company. Like their streetcar cousins,
each train consisted of a single rail car, driven by electric motors drawing
power from wires above the tracks, lending economic sense to electric
generating company ownership.
Rail
cars were stopped just about any place a passenger could waive down the
conductor. Depot calls were made in places like Coralville, Oakdale, North
Liberty and Swisher. The late Wendyll Stoner who operated cars for 30 years
chuckled that each run had 63 stops.
The
original Iowa City depot was at the corner of College and Clinton streets
downtown, with track running up Capitol Street from the south, and circling
the block located immediately south of Schaeffer Hall. College Street passed
through between Clinton and Madison streets until closed by 1970s urban
renewal redevelopment.
A
subsequent depot adjacent to still-existing tracks beside the UI Power Plant
was demolished about 1995.
Interurban
passenger service began Aug. 13, 1904, and was discontinued May 30, 1953. Use
peaked at nearly 600,000 passengers annually during gas rationing and rubber
tire shortage days of World War II. Use plummeted after the war, falling below
30,000 in 1950 when a dozen trains still ran daily, making it the last high
frequency service in Iowa.
It
initiated freight service in 1907 which still is provided today.
Students
used the interurban to access UI classes; but, less well known is that rural
kids rode the interurban to high school in Iowa City, particularly those from
North Liberty, during an era before school buses existed. They came not only
for public school City High, but also to parochial St. Mary’s and to UI’s
University High.
Sports
fans by the hundreds rode Crandic to UI games, both when the football field
was along the Iowa River upstream from the Burlington Street bridge, and then
beginning in 1929 at Kinnick Stadium.
Bleachers
on the east sideline of the Athletic Park field along the river were built in
part above the interurban tracks, making each rail car passing during the game
an added excitement. Since the cars were electric, they discharged no smoke or
steam typical of cross-country trains using wood, coal or diesel locomotives.
After
a 1922 UI football game played during a notorious downpour, numerous autos
became mud-bound in route toward Cedar Rapids on old Red Ball Road, now
Highway 218. Drivers abandoned them, hopped the next interurban car for a
night in Cedar Rapids or Iowa City, returning later to extricate vehicles.
The
interurban challenged the 1870s “Plug” rail connection from downtown Iowa
City to Elmira (known earlier as Lennox) in northeast Johnson County, where
one could make connections with service running from West Liberty (and points
south) through West Branch, Oasis, Elmira, Morse, Solon and Ely into Cedar
Rapids.
Although
it provided freight service to eastern Iowa City into the 1960s, the Plug as a
passenger service lasted only a short time after the Crandic interurban
initiated service in 1904.
Historically,
the interurban was both killer and godsend. Next Saturday: The local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Speakers. Bob Hibbs collects local postcards and researches history related to them.
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