Today, as in most city’s across the country, transportation in downtown Fayetteville is dominated by automobiles. In the early 1900s, however, streetcars once crisscrossed the budding metropolis on steel rails that stretched out from the city center.
From 1907 to 1921, Fayetteville operated a system of electric rail vehicles, which carried passengers along tracks embedded in the city streets from the Market House to textile mills in Massey Hill and Camp Bragg.
How the city’s streetcar started
According to Hattie Presnell, historic properties supervisor for the city of Fayetteville, four different streetcar companies operated in Fayetteville during the streetcar era. The four companies were the Consolidated Railways Light & Power Company; Fayetteville Street Railway & Power Company; Fayetteville Traction & Power Company; and Cumberland Railway & Power Company.
While the first streetcar didn’t begin operating until 1907, plans began much earlier. In 1867, the Fayetteville Street Railway & Power Company incorporated in the city. State legislation that year gave “the power to construct a street railway and to run car, upon the track of the same, propelled by animal or other power, in any of the streets or alleys of the town of Fayetteville, for a distance of two miles from the market house.”…