Palm Springs Aerial Tramway - History

History

The aerial tram was first proposed by electrical engineer Francis F. Crocker during a 1935 trip to Banning, California, with The Desert Sun newspaper publisher Carl Barkow. During the heat of the day, Crocker's gaze fell upon the snow-capped, 10,804 ft (3,293 m) high peak of Mount San Jacinto to the east. Crocker immediately decided to build an aerial tram up the face of Chino Canyon, a proposal that one newspaper dubbed "Crocker's Folly."

Toward the end of the decade, Crocker named the co-manager of the famed Palm Springs Desert Inn, O. Earl Coffman, to chair the construction committee.

Both World War II and the Korean War shelved the project. Construction began in 1960. The unprecedented use of helicopters in the construction of four of the aerial tram's five towers helped the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway earn a reputation as one of the greatest engineering feats ever accomplished.

In 1963, an aerial-tram car became stuck for 13½ hours because of an electrical problem in the control room.

On September 16, 1967, the first episode of the TV show Mannix was broadcast with the tramway as a scene in the show. On October 2, 1971, an episode of Mission: Impossible (Season 6: 3 "The Tram"), filmed at the Tramway, was first aired.

In June 1984, an aerial-tram car was headed down the mountain when a bolt from a shock absorber snapped, causing a 30-pound (14 kg) piece of metal to crash through a Plexiglas window along the car's roof. Tram passenger Elaine Tseko of Ontario, California, was struck by the piece and died as a result of the injury.

In September 1984, during routine maintenance, an auxiliary cable snapped and wrapped around the main cable tracks. The Desert Sun newspaper reported that if the broken cable hadn't wedged itself under the main track cables, a rescue car with the tram's workmen in it could have plummeted down the mountain into the lower tramway station. "Without the snag," a state investigator said, "those two men wouldn't be with us today."

In 1985, a flash flood buried vehicles parked in the Valley Station's parking lot in mud and tore up about three-quarters of a mile of Tramway Road. Stranded passengers had to be airlifted to safety.

In 2001, the original aerial-tram cars were replaced by new cars that rotate slowly, offering riders a 360° panoramic view of Chino Canyon and the desert valley floor.

In October 2003, a steel cable broke and caused a mechanical failure that left more than fifty tramway customers hanging in mid-air and one hundred passengers stranded at the Mountain station for 4-1/2 hours. During the crisis, tramway officials sought a rescue helicopter but could not locate one. The obstruction was finally removed by a tram operator with no training in maintenance, utilizing a borrowed Leatherman utility knife. The Desert Sun later reported that a cable inspector had discovered a break in the rescue line almost two hours before the incident occurred.