NextStop Blog

Wayne Brasler says:

I rode that streetcar line and my dad was a motorman on it! The junction is at what is now Hanley but not at Case. There’s no street junction where the streetcar junction was. The closest street is Suburban Avenue to the east. The tracks made a wide turn at the junction through Kinloch and that junction was always the site of a lot of activity. Suburban Avenue originated as the Ferguson streetcar branch, the road and homes coming later. When Suburban was constructed it ended just short of Carson Road, east of the present Hanley, and Kinloch residents could not drive to Ferguson to shop. When the tracks reached Florissant road the north track came from Florissant in a wide turn, the south track turned into Florissant with a sharp turn and the tracks joined into a single track because there wasn’t room on Florissant Road for double tracks. The streetcars then headed to a loop at the Wabash Railroad overpass, at Wesley Avenue. At the loop a second track emerged as a siding. How did motormen know if a trolley was not coming up Florissant? Facing the loop outside the Ferguson Department Store was a traffic signal. If it showed white it signaled a streetcar was on the tracks. A similar light face the tracks at the east end of the streetcar rail from Kinloch. The Ferguson line originally went to Kirkwood. In the early 1940s the southern destination was changed to Maplewood. On Skinker, from Delmar to Wydown, the Ferguson line shared trackage with the Clayton line. Between Etzel and Suburban Garden at Hodiamont an Kennerly it shared trackage with the Hodiamont line. The Page line also ran on the track for a block making a loop at Etzel. In the summer the Ferguson junction was in rich forest but I’ve never seen a photo of that. Its original name was Ramona Junction, a reference to Lake Ramona to the east, still there. There also was a loop at the lake.
I have a photo of that. Hanley Road from I-70 to Airport Road is on the right-of-way of the Ferguson and Berkeley lines, which originally was the Florissant line. An entire thriving community north of I-70 along Springdale Avenue was obliterated when airport runways were extended, said to be because no one could live with the airplane racket. I stay at the Hilton Garden Inn on Lake Ramona frequently; it was placed in the valley next to the Lake and I’m not even conscious of the planes going overhead. I could not find Lake Ramona for 60 years until the Hilton Inn was built, I stayed there and to my surprise there was the lake, which I immediately recognized.

RICHARD WALKUP says:

I am nearly 86 years old and have lived all over the Midwest from Webster Groves to Marshall and Kansas City MO and Omaha NE to Wichita, KS, but my earliest memories of Webster and traveling all over St. Louis and St. Louis County via street cars are still imprinted indelibly in my mind. When I was 8, 9, and 10 years old I traveled alone on street cars. It was safe for kids to do that then.

From 1934 to 1947 my sisters and I lived with our paternal grandparents, just off Oak Street on Poplar, between Rockhill Road and Cherry St. (although, I believe, the streets now are called avenues). We lived between two street car lines; the Kirkwood-Ferguson and the Manchester lines (55 & 56). I have been hard-pressed to locate a map showing those two street car lines. If if anyone can help me I’d sure appreciate it.