5-29-2024 12:52am

May 29, 1908: Trolley Service Through Boyertown Opened Between Pottstown and Reading

Lesley Misko Editor

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

May 29, 1908: Finally, after several years of fighting between the trolley company and borough residents, who had insisted on some strict stipulations as to what the trolley company had to do before one of its cars could “cling clang” through its streets, trolley service through Boyertown has now been opened between Reading and Pottstown, bit by bit.

In 1902, a service to Reading was completed, advertised as a lovely ride in the greatest of comfort through the most romantic and scenic countryside, leaving Reading every hour. It was a 90-minute ride that ran through the rich farming country of the Oley alley before arriving in Boyertown at the present Salvation Army headquarters.

Several years later, permission was granted to lay tracks on existing streets in town, and it was agreed that the tracks be extended north on Reading Avenue to the main intersection with Philadelphia Avenue.

By 1908, permission was received to extend the Pottstown line west on Philadelphia Avenue to meet that intersection at Reading Avenue, thus creating a line between Reading and Pottstown through Boyertown.