September 2014. Como-Harriet Streetcar Line, Minnesota Streetcar Museum, Minneapolis, MN.
The Minnesota Streetcar Museum is unusual because it is not a museum the way you usually think of one: there's not a big building full of stuff that you walk through and look at. According to their brochure, the mission of the museum is "to acquire, restore, maintain, and operate a fleet of historic streetcars," so the "museum" is the trolley that you ride in, and the tour guide is the conductor. It's a really cool idea to teach history through direct experience, riding a functional trolley rather than looking at one sitting in a museum!
We took a ride on a historic streetcar from Lake Harriet to Lake Calhoun and back (the ride only took about 5 minutes each direction), and we learned a lot about the history of streetcars in Minneapolis from the very informative trolley conductor. The one we rode on spent most of its career in Duluth. Some of the trolleys they have restored were found being used as summer cabins and had been completely gutted, but the museum goes to great lengths to rebuild them to be 100% historically accurate.
They also have an adorable little station where you can buy tickets and souvenirs (or in our case, pez machines for all kids, because they claimed not to know what pez machines were...???) and a little train platform to wait on. Someday we will have to try their theme trips; they have a spooky Halloween ride, a pumpkin patch ride, and a holiday-themed one. Yay!
Here's Amaranth on the trolley as we pass the south end of Lake Calhoun. All the windows were open because the weather was just perfect!
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