Jake's blog
Deleted Scenes from The Lost Subways: Sacramento's Evolution Into a Big City
Today's deleted scene is about Sacramento, California, the state's capital. Sacramento, California started out as a big city, and grew into a small town. In the 19th century, Sacramento was the second-largest city in California, it was the western terminus of the First Transcontinental Railroad, and it was the epicenter of the California Gold Rush. Thus, it made perfect sense when state legislators decided to move California’s capital there in 1854, after a few false starts in cow towns like Benicia, Vallejo and San Jose. But after the Gold Rush quieted down, Sacramento slipped into relative obscurity for nearly a...
Let's talk about safety on public transit, and the sense of disorder that prevails in California these days.
I've just arrived in Los Angeles for stop no. 7 on the book tour for The Lost Subways of North America. I'm going to be giving a talk Monday at 7pm at Village Well in Culver City. LA friends, I'll be here until Wednesday, and I'd love to hang if you're around. I have some thoughts, having returned to LA after being away for a bit. Every time I come back to Los Angeles, I'm shocked at just what people in LA put up with. The casual level of disorder that Angelenos put up with has apparently spread everywhere, and...
Deleted Scenes from The Lost Subways: The Time the KKK Almost Took Over Portland
The Portland chapter was cut for length, so I'm posting it here. === Portland straddles both sides of the 800-foot-wide Willamette River, and the 1920s were a golden age for bridgebuilding. Between 1900 and 1920, the city’s population had nearly tripled, and its inadequate transit infrastructure was creaking under the load. (A map of the streetcar system at the time is here.) The bridges over the Willamette were no exception. The old wrought-iron Burnside Bridge used by Portland Railway Light & Power’s streetcars was the worst of the lot and was in dire need of replacement. The 1920s were also...
Deleted Scenes from The Lost Subways: Denver
Now that The Lost Subways of North America is out, I'm posting deleted chapters. The first one that I cut was Denver.The Great Denver Streetcar StrikeThe streetcar and interurban industries were behemoths in the early 20th century, employing 300,000 workers in the early 1920s. This also made them ground zero for the labor strife that characterized the period. The best place to illustrate this type of management-labor strife of the period is Denver, Colorado. There, a three-way battle between the Denver Tramway, the Denver city government, and the streetcar workers’ union ultimately culminated in the declaration of martial law.The Tramway...
The book is out.
Today is book launch day for The Lost Subways of North America. I can now officially say that my decade-plus project to map North America's lost transit is at an end. (Obligatory plug: the book is on all major retailers - Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes + Noble, Indigo, etc., as well as on my website.) The next thing I'll be doing is the book tour - a list of events is here. I would love to meet up with people if we're in the same city at the same time. (Thankfully, my day job is mostly remote.)While I'm on tour for...