History
A franchise was given by the city in late 1886 to S. V. Harkness and his new company, the Orlando Street Railway, to place tracks and run cars on certain streets. When completed, its main line ran along Orange Avenue from Lake Ivanhoe, near the north city limits at the time, south to Lake Lucerne. It ran around the west side of Lake Lucerne, and made several turns west and south to the South Florida Fair Association's property. One branch ran from the Church Street Station of the South Florida Railroad east on Church Street across Orange Avenue to Magnolia Avenue (then Main Street), then south on Main Street to a Methodist Episcopal church, and another branch ran east on Central Avenue from Orange Avenue.
Service was ended by early 1893, and a citrus freeze in 1894 and 1895 devastated Orlando's economy and ensured that the company would not resume operations. The tracks were removed in late 1896 or 1897, being considered a public nuisance. Many plans were made, including an extension of the Sanford Traction Company from Sanford, but no other street railways have entered downtown Orlando since.
Read more about this topic: Orlando Street Railway
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)