Wichita Falls Traction Company

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do my best to do it justice. Now, some folks build a city and then figure out how to get around in it. Frank Kell and J.

A. Kemp, back in 1909, had a different idea entirely. They founded the Wichita Falls Traction Company, and what they did next was the kind of move that makes you set down your coffee and just appreciate the audacity.

See, they went out and bought undeveloped land, sitting right there between the city limits and Lake Wichita. Raw land. Nobody wanted it.

Nobody could easily get to it. And that, friend, was precisely the point. Because Kell and Kemp turned right around and built an electric streetcar system out to that very area.

Now the land they owned wasn't the outskirts anymore. It was convenient. It was connected.

People could get there with ease and speed, and so they did. The city of Wichita Falls grew rapidly right along that streetcar route, and the Traction Company, sitting on all that real estate it had speculated on, profited handsomely. Build the tracks, sell the land the tracks run through.

It's the kind of scheme that's almost too clean to believe, and yet there it is, playing a major role in the growth of Wichita Falls through the early twentieth century. The streetcars kept rolling until 1933, when buses came along and took their place. The rails went quiet.

But the neighborhoods they called into existence, those are still there.

What the marker says

This company, founded by Frank Kell and J. A. Kemp in 1909, played a major role in Wichita Falls growth during the early 20th century. After purchasing undeveloped land between the city limits and Lake Wichita, the company stimulated demand for it by building an electric streetcar system to the area. With the new ease and speed of travel, what formerly had been the city's outskirts became a convenient place to live. The city grew rapidly along the streetcar route and the company profited from its real estate speculation. Buses replaced the streetcars in 1933. (1992)