Some do archaeology with a shovel and a trowel, but sometimes a bike can be as useful a tool. Consider a rainy Sunday in Neartown, finding the ghosts of transportation past.

At the corner of Fairview and Taft is a pair of two-story business buildings. They seem incongruous: Fairview is a narrow two-lane street; the major artery here is Westheimer, only 5 blocks away. But this is transit-oriented development. This neighborhood was built around a streetcar line that ran from Downtown through Midtown (a residential neighborhood into the 1920s) and then out Fairview. One branch then turned south on Taft and ran to West Main on Hawthorne and Roseland; the other ran south on Mandell to Richmond. These stores, then, were where you got off the streetcar. The tracks were torn out in 1940. But their traces remain.

For the most part, the Montrose area has a continuous street grid. It wiggles a bit, but almost every east-west street is continuous. So why is Welch discontinuous at Grant, one block east of Montrose? We’ll have to go further back for that. In 1880, the Galveston, Houston and San Antonio Railroad built west from Houston. It run through the First Ward, then turned south along the edge of town, paralleling the future Montrose Blvd, crossing Main where 59 is now, and then skirting the edge of Hermann Park to Almeda before finally turning west along Holmes Road. Wealthy neighborhoods grew up along this line, and they grew tired of the trains.

Thus, for the first time in the history of Houston, political pressure persuaded a railroad to move its tracks. A new line was built far outside of town, running north south between an existing railroad line at Eureka Junction and the old east-west line southwest of Houston. The Montrose line was torn up; a bit lasted into the 1990s to serve the Robinson Warehouse and Ed Sacks Wastepaper. The replacement line is still there, but wealthy neighborhoods have grown up around it. So, next time you’re stuck waiting for a train in Highland Village or Afton Oaks or Bellaire, remember that those tracks were built in the middle of nowhere so they wouldn’t bother anyone.

As noted, the Montrose street grid wiggles a bit. Every major east-west street — Richmond, Westheimer, Fairview, West Gray — has at least one kink in in. But Alabama doesn’t. Why? The Texas Interlockers web site concludes that Alabama didn’t start as a street, but as a rail line, the narrow gauge Texas Western to Sugar Land. Since it was laid out at once (unlike the streets, which were built a few blocks at a time as part of multiple subdivisions) it’s straight.

There were once 3 rail lines in this area: the Galveston, Houston and San Antonio, the Texas Western, and the Southern Pacific running east-west where 59 is now (the same line whose abandoned right of way along Westpark is now owned by METRO). All three crossed each other near the intersection of Main Street and Blodgett. All of those tracks are long gone, but history repeats itself: the most important transfer station on our new urban rail system will be in more or less the same spot.

Montrose isn’t a ghost; it’s in the same place it was when it laid out in the early 1900s. But, like most streets, it;s had multiple lives. It started out as a residential street, lined with grand mansions. In the last 50 years, it’s become a commercial strip. A few of the homes, though, still survive, like the 1912 Link Mansion that now serves as an administration building for the University of St. Thomas. The trees up and down the street are a reminder of an older, slower, quieter Montrose.

All of us live among the ghosts of transportation past: decisions made 50 or 100 or even 171 years ago that still shape our lives today. It’s likely that the decisions we make today will last as long.

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