The California Street Cable Railroad (Cal Cable) was a long-serving cable car operator in San Francisco, founded by Leland Stanford. The company's first line opened on California Street in 1878 and is the oldest cable car line still in operation.
The company remained independent until 1951, outlasting all the other commercial streetcar and cable car operators in the city. The city purchased and reopened the lines in 1952; the current cable car system is a hybrid made up of the California Street line, and the Hyde Street section of Cal Cable's O'Farrell, Jones & Hyde line, together with other lines already in municipal ownership.
Famous quotes containing the words california, street, cable and/or railroad:
“The attraction and superiority of California are in its days. It has better days & more of them, than any other country.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There was an Old Man who supposed,
That the street door was partially closed;”
—Edward Lear (1812–1888)
“To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.”
—Douglass Cross (b. 1920)
“The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)