Let's Ride the Trolley!

"FOR A NICKEL, you could ride in this deluxe open street car from the old Baltimore and Ohio railroad station on Deatrick St., where the Wabash also stopped, a distance of more than two miles to Island Park, located on the 24 acre Preston Island in the Maumee River, east of town 

With this ride, you also got the thrill of crossing the old wooden trestle that then carried the cars high over Preston Run.  The trestle was a tall, spindly affair and, according to rumor, was not safe.  However carload after carload passed over it without incident. The trestle still stands, but unseen because it was covered over when the city made the Hopkins St. fill over Preston Run.

THE DEFIANCE STREET RAILWAY, which was one of the first electric street railways in Ohio, boasted four cars and two trailers.  One was a summer car, open all around, as pictured above. When it rained, patrons pulled down curtains.

At the time this picture was taken the cars hauled the U.S. mail.  The line ran from the south end of Harrison Ave. to Third St., under the Wabash overpass, east on Third to Clinton, south on Clinton to Juliet, over Juliet to Jefferson, then to Hopkins, east on Hopkins to a point near the American Steel Package Co., where it turned north to the Maumee bank across from Preston Island.  Here there was a wooden platform and wooden stairs to a pontoon bridge that connected with the island.  For a short time, there was a spur of the street car line from Third St., east on Clinton to First, but this was soon abandoned

THE LINE made a little money until the advent of the automobile, and that was its finish.  The 1913 flood swept everything off of Island Park.

This picture was brought in by Mrs. Blanche Heller, rt. 6, Defiance.  As far as she can learn, it was taken about 1897, somewhere in that period.  The car was standing on the Preston Run trestle.  The motorman-coachman was George B. Heller."

Source: Lloyd Tuttle, "A Backward Glance," undated clipping, Defiance Crescent-News.