Instant Cities: San Francisco

San Francisco › Places and landmarks

Cable cars

The last cable cars in the world still running in city streets, pulled up the hills by a cable under the road.

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Photo: JCruzTheTruth, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A cable car has no engine. A steel cable runs in a slot under the street, always moving at about 15 kilometres an hour, pulled round by big wheels in the powerhouse on Washington Street. The gripman pulls a lever that grips the cable to go, and lets go of it to stop, ringing the bell as the car climbs.

Andrew Hallidie ran the first one on Clay Street on 2 August 1873, after he saw horses slip and fall pulling a streetcar up a wet hill. By 1890 more than twenty lines climbed the city’s hills. Today three are left: Powell–Hyde, Powell–Mason and California Street.

At the end of Powell Street, by Market Street, the cars stop on a turntable, and the crew push them round by hand for the trip back. In 1947 the mayor wanted to replace them with buses, but Friedel Klussmann and her committee won the vote to keep them. They have been a National Historic Landmark since 1964. Visit it in 3D ›

More in San Francisco

Transamerica PyramidThe white pyramid of the Financial District, 260 metres tall, the sign of San Francisco’s skyline since 1972. Ferry BuildingThe ferry terminal at the foot of Market Street, with its clock tower after the Giralda of Seville, now a food hall. Coit TowerThe slim concrete tower on top of Telegraph Hill, built in 1933 with the money of Lillie Hitchcock Coit. Dragon GateThe gate into Chinatown on Grant Avenue at Bush Street, with green tiled roofs, dragons and two stone lions. ChinatownThe oldest Chinatown in North America, along Grant Avenue and Stockton Street, with lanterns over the street. Union SquareThe square of the big shops and hotels, named after the rallies for the Union before the Civil War. Washington SquareThe green heart of North Beach, the Italian quarter, before the white church of Saints Peter and Paul. City LightsThe bookshop of the Beat poets on Columbus Avenue, which published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956. Golden Gate BridgeThe orange suspension bridge across the mouth of the bay, about five kilometres west of the game’s map. Lombard StreetThe block of Lombard Street on Russian Hill with eight hairpin bends between flower beds, west of the game’s map. AlcatrazThe rocky island in the bay, a federal prison from 1934 to 1963, built so that no one could swim away. Sourdough breadThe sour, chewy bread of San Francisco, baked since the Gold Rush from a living dough.