Powell & Hyde Cable Car Turntable: The Wooden Mechanics of the Bay

Why is it significant?

Stand at the edge of the wooden circular turntable at Hyde and Beach Streets and watch the gripman and conductor lean their full body weight against the wooden bumper of the green-and-cream cable car, rotating the eight-ton Victorian vehicle one hundred and eighty degrees by hand for its return…

Key Facts

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Stand at the edge of the wooden circular turntable at Hyde and Beach Streets and watch the gripman and conductor lean their full body weight against the wooden bumper of the green-and-cream cable car, rotating the eight-ton Victorian vehicle one hundred and eighty degrees by hand for its return journey up the steep hills. Invented in eighteen seventy-three by Andrew Smith Hallidie after he witnessed horses slipping and dying on wet cobblestones, San Francisco's cable cars are the world's only remaining manually operated cable car system. Moving at a steady nine and a half miles per hour, each car clamps mechanically onto a continuous steel cable that runs ceaselessly beneath the street pavement. In nineteen sixty-four, the cable car system was designated the very first moving National Historic Landmark in the United States, saved from municipal destruction by a fiercely determined campaign led by local women activists. Walk up the steep sidewalk of Hyde Street to Russian Hill to stand atop the crookedest street in the world.