Rail Returns to the Westside: The Expo Line's Historical Precursors

Passengers on the Metro Expo Line, which opened to Culver City in April 2012 and reaches Santa Monica in May 2016, retrace a historic route through the city. The light-rail line's technology may be new, but much its right-of-way dates to 1875, when the first rail link between downtown L.A. and the Westside opened and gave birth to the city of Santa Monica.

In 1874, silver baron John P. Jones partnered with sheep rancher Robert S. Baker and his wife Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker to develop a seaside resort town on Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica. Perched atop picturesque bluffs and cooled by an ocean breeze, the town was favorably located – except that it was a long stagecoach journey from the region's population center in Los Angeles. To make the town marketable, Jones built a 16-mile rail line between the Santa Monica Bay waterfront and downtown Los Angeles, naming it the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad. It was only the second railroad built in Los Angeles; the first was the Los Angeles and San Pedro, which opened in 1869.

At the mouth of the Santa Monica Arroyo, where Interstate 10 meets with Pacific Coast Highway today, a wharf – forerunner to today's Santa Monica Municipal Pier – extended into the ocean. There, ships could dock and unload freight onto rail cars. Heading east, the railroad passed through the future communities of Palms and Culver City before crossing the marshy cienegas of the Ballona Creek plain and then turning north to its terminal at San Pedro and Fifth streets in downtown Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles and Independence helped make Santa Monica palatable to real estate speculators and prospective residents, but Jones, who was politically well-connected as a U.S. senator from Nevada, had grander plans for the railroad. Intending to connect the line with the town of Independence in the Owens Valley, and from there to a silver mine he owned in the Panamint Mountains, Jones optimistically included "Independence" in his railroad's name. Later, Jones hoped, he could extend the line still further east to Salt Lake City and create a transcontinental line to rival the Southern Pacific.

But luck did not favor the railroad – or Jones – in its early years. Workers had surveyed the entire route and begun grading a path through the Cajon Pass when Jones' silver mine unexpectedly played out in 1876.

1877 lithographic drawing of Santa Monica. The Los Angeles and Independence Railroad's western terminus was a wharf, which extended into the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Santa Monica Arroyo. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

A barn served as the Los Angeles and Independence's Santa Monica station in the railroad's early years. Courtesy of the Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

Though Jones planned to extend the line to Inyo County, the Los Angeles and Independence was never extended past its downtown L.A. terminal at San Pedro and Fifth. Courtesy of the California Historical Society Collection, USC Libraries.

Southern Pacific excursion trains, shown here in a circa 1900 photo, regularly brought beachgoers and to Santa Monica. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.

Meanwhile, excursion trains brought beach-going day-trippers, but Santa Monica's population stagnated in the midst of an economic depression, and the town struggled to compete with San Pedro as a shipping center. In dire financial straits, Jones reluctantly sold the Los Angeles and Independence to Collis P. Huntington's Southern Pacific Railroad on July 1, 1877 for $195,000. Decades later, Jones wrote to his wife: "If you only knew how my heart ached when I was obliged by stress of circumstance to part with the RR, which together with matters connected with it was the pet project of my life."

Seeking a monopoly over rail transportation in the Los Angeles area, the Southern Pacific linked the railroad with its transcontinental line, which had arrived in Los Angeles in 1876. Traffic increased along the Los Angeles & Independence during the 1880s, as a regional population boom swelled Santa Monica's resident population as well as the number of day-trippers. The following decade, the railroad briefly became one of the region's principal freight corridors when the Southern Pacific built a mile-long wharf near Santa Monica and attempted to establish a commercial shipping harbor there.

But with the federal government's 1897 decision to build a harbor in San Pedro instead of Santa Monica, the Los Angeles and Independence declined in importance. It also faced competition for passenger service with the electric railways of the Los Angeles Pacific, which crisscrossed today's Westside and first reached Santa Monica in 1889.

In 1908, the fabled red cars of the Los Angeles Pacific (later the Pacific Electric) replaced the Southern Pacific's steam trains on the now-electrified rails of the Los Angeles and Independence.

Renamed the Santa Monica Air Line, the route was intended as a shortcut between Los Angeles and the Westside communities of Culver City, Santa Monica, and Venice. With its dedicated right-of-way, the Air Line was unusual among L.A.'s interurban routes, which usually shared the crowded roadways with automobiles and pedestrians. Fewer station stops and street crossings made for a quicker trip between the Pacific Electric's terminal at Main and Sixth and the line's coastal terminus at Santa Monica's Rustic Canyon.

Despite its advantages, however, the Air Line never took off. Passengers complained of rough trips along the tracks formerly traversed by steam locomotives, and other lines – such as those that rolled down Santa Monica and Venice boulevards – traveled through more densely populated neighborhoods. Red cars initially whisked passengers away every hour, but by 1924 service diminished to one car per day. The Santa Monica Air Line limped along for decades until it was was finally abandoned in 1953, ending 78 years of continuous passenger rail service along the route.

Detail of a circa 1912 map of the Pacific Electric interurban rail system. The Santa Monica Air Line is highlighted in aqua. Courtesy of the Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA.

Detail of a circa 1920 relief map of the Pacific Electric interurban rail system. The Santa Monica Air Line is highlighted in aqua. Courtesy of the Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA.

Named after the Ivy Park housing development, the Ivy station stop along the Santa Monica Air Line served present-day Culver City. Courtesy of the Metro Transportation Library and Archive. Used under a Creative Commons license.

A Santa Monica Air Line car travels eastbound on Exposition Boulevard in front of USC's Mudd Hall. Photo by Alan Weeks, courtesy of the Metro Transportation Library and Archive.

A Santa Monica Air Line car travels west through Culver City at Venice and Robertson. Photo by Alan Weeks, courtesy of the Metro Transportation Library and Archive.

A Red Car traveling on the Santa Monica Air Line crosses over Motor Avenue. Photo by Alan Weeks, courtesy of the Metro Transportation Library and Archive.