SALT LAKE CITY — Orange cones, closed lanes and heavy drilling: the sights and sounds of summer in Salt Lake City.
The city is currently pulling out the medians to beautify State Street as part of the "Life on State" project. Sam Chaparro, a tattoo artist at Big Deluxe Tattoo, is excited to see the end result.
“I've heard that it's going to be about a million dollars per block from, like, 600 South down to, I think, 900 South," he said. "So quite a bit of money going into it, and it should look pretty good.”
In the process, crews uncovered a big piece of Salt Lake history.
“We're looking at 110-year-old trolley car lines that were sitting six inches below State Street," said Chris Merritt, the Utah State Historic Preservation officer.
The metal tracks are from the last operating lines of streetcars that brought people back and forth to Salt Lake City and Murray on an electrified line from the late 1800s until the 1940s, Merritt said.
“We had this amazing intricate system of trolley car lines to move people efficiently with very little air pollution," he said.
The trolley’s popularity peaked in the 1920s; on State Street, you would see the trolley rolling side-by-side with automobiles and horse-drawn carriages, Merritt said.
“As the '40s rolled around, it just became less and less used, more and more a public nuisance," he said. "After World War II, we had the big boom of the middle class. Everybody started getting automobiles. No one wanted to take the streetcar line anymore.”
Many lifelong Salt Lake residents had no idea about the invisible past beneath the pavement.
“I think that's really cool that they're finding old stuff that's been there," said Chaparro. "I didn't know about that stuff.”
Soon, these hidden remnants of the old Salt Lake City streetcar will likely be gone, Merritt said.
“You need better stable soils in 2023 to build roads and improvements," he said. "So these will probably be removed, but they will be well documented first. So at least we'll capture that history now that we uncovered it again.”
