I grew up in D.C. and have been curious about Washington’s streetcars all my life — in particular, the line that ran from Georgetown to Cabin John. This line ran directly behind my childhood house: on Sherrier Place NW, near the bridge over Arizona Avenue. When I was old enough, I’d hike the remnants of this line. I’d always regretted being born too late to enjoy this streetcar ride!
I have long been puzzled by how the streetcar line was routed past Dalecarlia Reservoir. Did the streetcar run through the reservoir’s property or around it?
— Leslie Carter, Shepherdstown, W.Va.
“If I could go back in time and ride the streetcar, that would be the one I’d like to ride,” said John DeFerrari, author of 2015’s “Capital Streetcars: Early Mass Transit in Washington, D.C.”
The reason? The experience on the No. 20 route was unlike that of any other streetcar line in Washington. And that’s because of where it went: into the wild.
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The Georgetown end of the line was at 36th and Prospect NW. Once out of town, the streetcar entered a tunnel of green. Trees crowded the track bed. The trolley ran along the bluff overlooking the palisades of the Potomac. Several tall trestles carried the rails over stream valleys.
“I rode the line many times, from the time I was 12 years old until they quit running,” said 93-year-old streetcar buff Garth Burleyson of Colesville, Md. “It was strictly rural. When they got out in the country, there was no speed limit. They could sort of let it rip.”
Garth grew up at Sixth and F streets NE, within two blocks of three different streetcar lines. That proximity fostered a love for the trolleys.
The Georgetown-Cabin John route allowed people who lived in that part of Montgomery County to commute into the District for work. But its main claim to fame was its access to the Glen Echo amusement park, built in 1911.
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The earliest line to Glen Echo was built in 1891 by Glen Echo Railroad to get to the Chautauqua operated by eggbeater magnates Edward and Edwin Baltzley. It ran from Friendship Heights. After the Chautauqua failed, the Washington & Great Falls Electric Railway incorporated some of the right of way into its new line from Georgetown to Cabin John. (It never made it all the way to Great Falls.)
Getting past the Dalecarlia Reservoir — constructed in the 1850s to hold drinking water from the Potomac before its trip into D.C. — wasn’t a problem. The reservoir grounds were smaller then, pretty much confined to the area east of today’s MacArthur Boulevard. The sedimentation basins west of MacArthur weren’t built until much later.
“It didn’t do any wiggling or running around the Dalecarlia Reservoir,” Garth said.
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There was even a stop at the reservoir, said John Shriver, a member of the National Capital Trolley Museum.
The Cabin John line was abandoned in 1960, two years before the District’s entire streetcar system ceased operating — and a year before the segregated amusement park was finally integrated. The tracks were pulled up. Parts of the right of way were sold to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers when the reservoir grounds were enlarged.
There was apparently a certain laxity on this particular line. Garth said that teenage friends of his would sometimes cajole motormen into letting them drive the streetcars into town from Glen Echo late at night.
“It never happened to me,” he said. “I wasn’t that smart or adventurous, I guess.”
Open sesame?
A sesame seed is a very small thing, and yet it looms large in Don Rockwell’s memory. Don is desperate to recall the details of a TV commercial he swears he saw around 1970, when he was an 8- or 9-year-old growing up in Silver Spring. Can you help?
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“It was a cartoon of these four sesame seeds, dressed up like hippies and playing a rock-and-roll song,” Don wrote.
The song started with “Hey, hey, heeeyyyyy! We’re the sesame seeds!” and the lyrics extolled the seed’s charms.
Don can’t remember all the words, but one line went: “A plain old burger is a lot more fun when it’s [something-something-something] on a sesame bun.”
Don saw the ad on a Washington television station. He doesn’t think the commercial actually advertised a specific product. He suspects it was created by a sesame seed trade organization. It may even have been broadcast only in the Washington area, possibly to influence some sesame seed-centric legislation.
If you remember this ad — or even better, know something about it — drop Answer Man a line. The email address is answerman@washpost.com.
Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.
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