Glendale and Montrose Railway’s Relics – Part 1

The Glendale and Montrose Railway electric trolley system was short-lived but critical to the modern growth of our valley. It ran from 1913 to 1930. It had been built specifically for the creation of Montrose and ran from La Crescenta all the way down through Glendale and into the outskirts of Los Angeles. This trolley line came at a time when not everyone had a car to get around and it existed through the 1920s, a period of explosive growth in the valley and Montrose specifically.

It folded in 1930 with the beginning of the Great Depression. The tracks were torn up, electric poles and wires removed and the trolley cars scrapped or sold. But if you know what to look for, remnants of the Glendale and Montrose Railway, the G&M, are all around us. And the most obvious relic of the trolley line are some of the roadways we drive on each day. 

Montrose Avenue running from Pennsylvania Avenue to Honolulu Avenue is unusually wide. Its width was built to accommodate trolley tracks down the middle with auto roadway on either side. Popularly, it has been said that the wide boulevard was intended to be the business district of Montrose instead of Honolulu Avenue. In the early plans for the town of Montrose, the intersection of Ocean View Boulevard and Montrose Avenue was to be the site of the Montrose Country Club (which never happened) with a four-acre park, so maybe it was true that Montrose Avenue was to be the business district. Montrose Avenue has a nice sweeping curve and a long straightaway, perfect for a rail line.

Below Honolulu, Montrose Avenue continues as North Verdugo Road. The obvious rail line feature here is the landscaped parkway in the center of the road, which has grass and a mix of trees, including some big stately deodars. This was the trolley track area. When the tracks were pulled up after the line closed in 1930, there was a call for locals to donate trees to plant in the center where the tracks had been. There was even a proposal to make it into a Christmas Tree Lane, like the one in Altadena. Neither worked out and the center divider was landscaped by the County. 

As a side note, we see landscaped center dividers like this all through Greater Los Angeles. Glenoaks Boulevard through Glendale is a perfect example of this. In most cases these are where the trolley tracks once were.

Continuing south past the Oakmont golf course, we hit the long straightaway of Canada Boulevard down to Verdugo Park. The route between Glendale and the Crescenta Valley had, before the trolley line, always been the curvy Verdugo Road on the east side of the Verdugo Woodlands. The long straight Canada Boulevard was created specifically for the trolley line to avoid the curves of Verdugo Road and auto paving was added after.

South of Verdugo Park and Glendale College, we again have the very wide Verdugo Road designed specifically to handle trolleys and trains down the middle of the road. The “center of the road” tracks continued all the way down Glendale Avenue to Forest Lawn Glendale. There the tracks left the road and paralleled San Fernando Road. These tracks were also used by Union Pacific – though it’s a stretch to imagine full-size steam locomotives chugging up and down the middle of Glendale Avenue.

One last roadway to mention. If you turn off Foothill Boulevard and head north on Tujunga Canyon Boulevard into Tujunga, you will notice that it is much like Montrose Avenue with gentle sweeping curves and long straightaways and being unusually wide. Valentine Hartranft was the founder of Tujunga. He had also been the president of the trolley system that later became the Glendale and Montrose Railway. He undoubtedly laid out Tujunga Canyon Boulevard hoping for the G&M to be extended to Tujunga.

So as you drive along Montrose Avenue be sure to stay out of the middle of the road. That’s for the trolley to run on. 

In my next article, I’ll profile more remnants of the G&M Railway.