Omaha Cable Tramway Company - History

History

The Omaha Cable Tramway Company was originally formed in 1884, and began operating in 1887. Its power house was at 20th and Harney Streets in Downtown Omaha.

Frederick Drexel, who came to Omaha in 1856, helped incorporate the Cable Tramway Company in 1887. Former Omaha mayor Ezra Millard was the first treasurer of the company when he died in 1886, and Samuel R. Johnson was the president.

The company had a bad image because of frequent disruptions in service caused by cable breakages. The cables were made of wire and hemp rope. In 1887 the company was sued by the Omaha Horse Railway for infringing on its territory after the Cable Tramway Company built tracks on the same street the railway operated on. The case was dismissed by a district court judge.

After electrically powered trams were introduced in Omaha, in April 1889 the Cable Tramway Company consolidated with the Omaha Horse Railway under the name Omaha Street Railway Company, which was then disbanded in 1896.

Read more about this topic:  Omaha Cable Tramway Company

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.
    Titus Livius (Livy)

    The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
    There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.
    Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)

    There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)