Brookside is a charming, leafy neighborhood located on the southern end of Kansas City, Missouri…the largest contiguous master planned neighborhood in the country.
Part of the Country Club District, the original plan for Brookside was new homes built for middle-income, upper middle-income and for upper-income families.
The more expensive homes in Brookside were built to the west. Higher home values in Brookside are often determined by how far east or how far west of Main Street the home is located.
Brookside’s Trolley Track Trail. The Harry Wiggins Trolley Track Trail.
The trolley which once ran through Brookside was named for a Missouri state senator who was born in Kansas City. This senator was Harry Wiggins. Brookside’s Trolley Trail is a six-mile path.
Today there is no trolley that runs along Brookside’s Trolley Trail. There are no trolley tracks on the Trolley Trail either. But at one time, long ago, there was a trolley in Brookside which ran along what today is our Harry Wiggins Trolley Track Trail.
This old trolley run in Brookside was borne in the late 19th Century.
In the late 1800’s, comparable to cable cars one would have found in San Francisco at that time, the trolleys which ran through Brookside were propelled by underground cables. The earliest Brookside trolleys operated by gripping underground cables which were installed underneath the tracks.
As the 19th Century turned into the 20th Century, the means by which trolleys were propelled changed. Underground cables were replaced. The cable system trolleys used were replaced by electricity.
Those old Brookside trolley tracks have long since been torn up. The Harry Wiggins Trolley Track Trail is now occupied by walkers, joggers, baby strollers and cyclists. There are no trolleys.
Trolley travel gave way to pedestrians on the old trolley track.
At its inception, the Harry Wiggins Trolley Track Trail fostered a trackbed, wooden cross ties and a ballast. This trolley line in Brookside was the Country Club Line.
The Country Club Line took riders south to Brookside shops found in the Brookside Shopping District. Where 63rd Street meets Brookside Boulevard was the heart of Brookside’s shopping district.
Founded in 1920, the Brookside Shopping District was Kansas City’s first suburban-themed shopping center. It was thirty-seven years after the Brookside Shopping District opened that the last Country Cub Line trolley ran through Brookside. That year was 1957…the end for trolleys in Brookside.
At one time, Kansas City had one of the most extensive trolley systems in the country.
Today, Kansas City’s rich trolley history has been reawakened with the city’s streetcar.
Long ago Brookside trolleys and streetcars found in center city represented a popular mode of transportation in Kansas City. Times changed. And Kansas City – as did most cities by the mid-20th Century – replaced their trolleys and their streetcars with buses.
In Brookside, the end of trolleys led to a new constitution for the Harry Wiggins Trolley Track Trail. The new constitution for the Trolley Track Trail has been written for walkers, joggers and cyclists.
The Harry Wiggins Trolley Track Trail.
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