United Railroads of San Francisco - California

Beautifully engraved signed and unissued certificate #B33 from the United Railroads of San Francisco dated 1907. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of a San Francisco Cable Car. This item has the signature of the Company's President, Patrick Calhoun and is over 99 years old. 30 coupons attached on bottom.






Certificate Vignette

The Market Street Railway Company was a commercial streetcar and bus operator in the San Francisco. The company was named after the famous Market Street of that city, which formed the core of its transportation network. Over the years, the company was also known as the Market Street Railroad Company, the Market Street Cable Railway Company and the United Railroads of San Francisco.

The franchise for what would become the Market Street Railway was granted in 1857 to Thomas Hayes. The line was the first horsecar line to open in San Francisco, opened on July 4, 1860, as the Market Street Railroad Company.

Following the opening of the cable hauled Clay Street Hill Railroad in 1873, pressure grew to convert the city's horsecar lines to the new form of traction. In 1882, Leland Stanford and associates bought the Market Street Railroad Company and converted its lines to cable haulage. In the process, the company's name was changed to the Market Street Cable Railway Company. This company was to grow to become San Francisco's largest cable car operator. At its peak, it operated five lines all of which converged into Market Street to a common terminus at the Ferry Building; during rush hours a cable car left that terminus every 15 seconds.

However transit technology was still moving on, and the new electric streetcar quickly proved to cheaper to build and operate than the cable car, and capable of climbing all but San Francisco's steepest hills. In 1893, Stanford died and the company was taken over by the Southern Pacific Railroad. The company was again renamed to the Market Street Railway Company, and began the process of converting its lines to electric traction. However conversion was resisted by opponents who objected to what they saw as ugly overhead lines on the major thoroughfares of the city center. At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, those objections were swept away as the great San Francisco earthquake struck. The race to rebuild the city allowed the company to replace all but the steepest of its cable car lines with electric streetcar lines.

By this stage, the company had changed hands again, and become the United Railroads of San Francisco (URR). Over the years many independent lines had been absorbed, including the Clay Street Hill Railroad, the Presidio & Ferries Railway, and the Ferries and Cliff House Railway. Ironically the earthquake that brought so many benefits to the company also sowed the seeds of its demise, as the independent Geary Street, Park & Ocean Railway was acquired by the city and became the beginning of the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni). By 1918, and assisted by the construction of several tunnels under the city's hills, the Muni was in direct competition with the URR down the length of Market Street. The two operators each operated their own pair of rail tracks down that thoroughfare, which came to be known as the 'roar of the four'.

Competition, labor troubles and a bad accident in 1918 led to the reorganisation of the URR, to re-emerge again as the Market Street Railway Company. This continued to operate electric streetcars throughout the city, the Powell-Mason cable car line, and a growing fleet of buses. But relations were not good with the city, who controlled their franchises, and in 1944 the company sold all its assets and operations to the Muni.

History from Wikipedia and Encyberpedia.