(Source of image: Florida State Archives)

A ghost from the past, this sign still marked a streetcar stop during the 1940s.  This was about 10 years after the vehicles rolled into the River City's history.  Does anyone know what neighborhood the photo was snapped in?

Another trolley system ghost can still can be seen in Avondale.  A bumpy but interesting ride may be taken on Aberdeen Street, an area of charming houses, many of the bungalow style.  Along a four block span between Plaza Place and St. Johns Avenue, bricks run down the middle of Aberdeen where trolley tracks once lay.  In fact, the path of the old rails can be discerned in the pattern of the bricks. 

Before World War I, the "end of the line" for the trolleys was on Aberdeen.  Streetcars would head back into town from here.  Actually, the vehicles didn't use a loop or a roundtable to turn around on.  Instead, the seats on each streetcar were flipped in reverse, and the driver would remove the steering mechanism and remount it at the other end of the vehicle. 

Later, the line was extended to Ortega Island.  The track turned west on Plaza Place, which runs into Hendricks Street.  Hendricks is relatively wide in the vicinity of Avondale's Boone Park, and the reason may have been so that it could once accommodate the rails that lay in it.

The trolley companies often used bricks between and around streetcar rails that were in streets.  When the track had to be repaired, the bricks could be removed and later replaced.  This info came from longtime Jax resident Jack McGiffin in his book It Ain't Like It Was in the Good Old Days... No, and It Never Was.

An interesting memory of the streetcar line to Ortega was obtained from another long-time Jacksonville resident.  When she was a young girl during the early 1930s, her mother used to put her & her sisters on the streetcar for a day's outing.  Holding a nickel each, the children enjoyed a ride from their North Jacksonville neighborhood.  Their money would be spent for ice cream when they finally reached Ortega.  Then they would head back home on the trolley, taking in the sights along the way.

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