Montgomery through the years

In 1885, the Capital City Railway Company began operation of a mule-drawn trolley line known as “Jingle Bells,” in downtown Montgomery. Trolley tracks soon spread through the city, providing slow but sure mass transit.

With thoughts of improving the system, J.A. Gaboury, superintendent of the street company, engaged Canadian inventor Charles Van Depoele who was already experimenting with electric-powered transportation, to collaborate on an electrical version of the streetcar. On April 15, 1886, passengers began riding the trolley, which was soon dubbed the “Lightning Route.”

The late 1880s brought Montgomerians their first gasoline-powered automobiles, but the railroad remained the most popular. Trains carried 44 passengers that arrived and departed daily as Union Station, built in 1898, offered comfort and cheer to weary travelers. In 1889 the first free public library in the state was organized in Montgomery

The new century witnessed further expansion in 1910 when Wilbur Wright came south looking for a site for a flying school in a temperate climate that would permit year-round flying. Frank D. Kohn showed Wright his own plantation, which was the site of the old Indian village of Towassa. This site, an air repair depot, located on the site of the Wright’s Flying School, serviced planes from nearby fields, and in the 1920s, renamed Maxwell Field, it became an air-training base. Today, it is the home of Air University. From the time of World War I, the military has been an important cultural and economic asset to Montgomery.

War on a worldwide scale brought with it transitions. In 1917, Camp Sheridan, an infantry training base on Montgomery’s outskirts, prepared thousands of young men for combat. Among them was F. Scott Fitzgerald who met Zelda Sayre at a country club dance. The two married at War’s end and set a style that brought them into the forefront of the Jazz Age.

Montgomery has survived significant historical civil upheavals and is now a thriving metropolis with improved race relations and an industry that spans throughout the world. From Blount, Inc. a mega company that built the New Orleans Superdome to Hyundai, an international company that will build automobiles locally in 2005. Today, Montgomery combines the qualities of a leading cultural and recreational center with such assets as world-class theatre, museums, family activities and history.

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