Ramsey County History – Summer 2002: “The Road to the Selby Tunnel, Or How to Make It Up the St. Anthony Hill”

The Road to the Selby Tunnel, Or How to Make It Up the St. Anthony Hill
Author: Virginia Brainard Kunz

St. Paul’s hills posed a challenge for the street railways of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article describes the earliest days of horsecars, the problem of hills, the brief experiment with cable cars, the coming of electric streetcars, St. Paul’s curious relationship with street rail magnate Thomas Lowry, and the conquering of St. Anthony (now Cathedral) Hill by the Selby Tunnel.
PDF of Kunz article