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Sic Transit Eagle Rock

The 5 Line On Colorado Boulevard

5 Line sign around 1920. Eagle Rock City 1911-1923 (ERVHS)
George Diddock's real estate office is on the southwest Corner of Eagle Rock and Colorado in 1909. Both streets are still unpaved. The side of the College Inn building is visible on the right. In the center right the newly built Eagle Rock School is visible in the distance. On the left is the Los Angeles Railways trolley from downtown, heading for the end of the line at Townsend Avenue (Published in the Los Angeles Herald Sunday Magazine)
The Edwards and Winters building sits isolated on Townsend Avenue at the end of a widened, but still dirt, street. Behind us the Eagle Rock Road to Garvanza and Pasadena was small and unimproved. Long known as the Murfield block, it now houses Tritch Hardware. (Courtesy the Elena Frackelton Murdock family)
The business center at Eagle Rock and Colorado Boulevards had continued to grow in 1927 with the addition of the three story Ritchy Hardware building on Caspar, and the addition of a trolley waiting area in the center of the intersection, dubbed the "Merrie Go Round”. The concrete structure became a great obstacle to increased auto traffic and was removed in the mid-thirties. (ERVHS)
The intersection of Colorado Boulevard looking East from Eagle Rock Boulevard. The passenger boarding area is shown to the left of the tracks. (Southern California Railway Museum, Ray Younghans Collection)
The Trolley car accelerated due to gravity coming downhill from Townsend Avenue. It failed to make the turn and crashed into parked cars on Eagle Rock Boulevard near where Chipotle is now. (ERVHS)
The news story. (ERVHS, publication unknown)
The trolley car is shown near the end of the line at Townsend Avenue in 1946. The switch that allowed the car to return on the double tracked right of way is shown in the foreground. (Southern California Railway Museum, Ray Younghans photograph)
The streetscape looking East from Mt. Royal Drive is shown in 1946 (Southern California Railway Museum, Ray Younghans photograph)
The trolley tracks are removed in this view East from Mt. Royal Drive in June of 1946. (Alan Weeks photograph)
The trolley stop at Argus Drive looking West in March of 1948. The Safeway store on the left has become part of the Piller’s building, last occupied and remodeled by the Renaissance Arts Academy.(Alan Weeks photograph)
The same view at Argus Drive looking West in June of 1948. The track and the raised boarding area are removed. (Alan Weeks photograph)
5 Line Sign, probably near the end. (ERVHS)
The Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock
2225 Colorado Blvd.
Eagle Rock, CA 90041

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