Bilbo Jitney Line, Headquarters Site

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna make sure you hear every word. Now picture west Dallas in 1915. No streetcars.

No bus lines. Nothing. If you lived out toward Cement City, or Gates, or Sowers, or Irving, or any of those outlying communities, you were on your own getting anywhere.

The western part of Dallas might as well have been the far side of the moon when it came to public transportation; because there wasn't any. Enter Victor Clifford Bilbo. Born in 1894, this man looked at that problem and apparently said, I've got a Model T Ford touring car and I've got somewhere to be.

He started running a jitney line (that's a small bus, for those of you keepin' notes) from downtown all the way out to those communities that the city had apparently forgotten existed. And he did it in 1915, when the idea was brand new and the roads weren't exactly what you'd call forgiving. Now here's where it gets good.

The fare was five cents a ride. Five cents. And folks took him up on it in a big way; passengers sitting three deep, hanging off the running boards of those Model T Fords.

You want to talk about riding in style, that ain't it. But you want to talk about getting where you need to go, Victor Bilbo was your man. And it wasn't all commerce, either.

He took people to hospitals free of charge. He took people to funerals free of charge. The man understood that some trips you just don't ask somebody to pay for.

The Bilbo Jitney Line ran and ran, a fixture of west Dallas life for more than a decade. But in August of 1927, new state franchise laws came down, and just like that, the jitneys were replaced by buses. Not by choice; by law.

Those Model T Fords, crammed with passengers and running on five-cent fares and a whole lot of goodwill, gave way to something bigger and more official. Victor Clifford Bilbo lived until 1968. And right here is where his operation was headquartered: the place where all those rides began.

Five cents, three deep, and a free trip if you really needed one. That's a legacy worth stopping for.

What the marker says

In 1915, when public transportation was non-existent in the western part of Dallas, Victor Clifford Bilbo (1894 - 1968) began operating a jitney (small bus) line from downtown to Cement City, Gates, Sowers, Irving, and other outlying communities. Paying five cents per ride, passengers often sat three deep and hung on running boards of Bilbo's Model T Ford touring cars. He often took people to hospitals and funerals free of charge. In August 1927, because of new state franchise laws, the Bilbo jitneys were replaced by buses. 1974, 1989