06/04/2026
🍊From the O.C. Archives: The Pacific Electric's "Red Cars" played a key role in Orange County's development.
🚗Henry E. Huntington and his partners formed the Pacific Electric Railway Co. in 1901 and had more than 1,000 miles of track throughout Southern California by the mid-1920s. These trolleys were an important part of everyday life. In Orange County, the Los Angeles-based P.E. served many communities including Seal Beach, Yorba Linda, Santa Ana, Orange, Cypress, La Habra, Balboa, and more.
☀️🌴In 1903, Huntington and his partners bought the Pacific City tract where they developed the beach getaway of Huntington Beach as a destination for passengers. The newly laid out towns of Sunset Beach and Corona del Mar (where the tracks never arrived) also banked on the P.E. as their lifeblood. But the Red Cars were already in decline by the late 1920s, although regular passenger service would not end entirely until 1953. While conspiracy theories persist regarding the P.E.'s demise, it just became obsolete. Automobiles gave people the freedom to go where they wanted *when* they wanted, and trolleys fell out of favor.
🍊The Orange County Archives has 145 photos of the Pacific Electric in Orange County, an inch-thick subject file, and 35 books on the subject. The images shown here are a trolley in Santa Ana in the 1940s, and a 1912 map of the P.E. system. [Images and history courtesy Orange County Archives]
