1896: The Launch of a Major Transit System in Wisconsin

January 29, 1896

The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company (TMER&L) was incorporated. The establishment of this transit enterprise took place nearly four decades after streetcars had been introduced in Milwaukee in the form of horse-drawn vehicles. 

TMER&L specifically came into existence when the properties and operations of the Milwaukee Street Railway Company were sold to the following individuals:

• Charles F. Pfister, G. Bigelow, and E.K. Miller of Milwaukee; and
• William Nelson Cromwell, Charles W. Wetmore, and Arnold Marcus of New York.

The next day’s edition of the Saint Paul Globe reported, “These gentlemen represent a reorganization committee of the bondholders of the old company, and a new company is to be formed immediately, to be known as the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light company, with $8,000,000 capital stock.”

While primarily formed to provide transit services in Wisconsin’s largest city and one of the major urban centers of the midwestern United States, TMER&L also handled electrical utilities. This company, as a matter of fact, became the largest combined network of its kind in Wisconsin. 

With its electric streetcars eventually serving much of Milwaukee and running along most of the city’s major roads, TMER&L mirrored the burgeoning expansion and use of those transit systems nationwide throughout the 1890s. “A decade has worked wonders in the evolution of the electric railway, as in many other things,” stated an article published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1898.  “It has grown from an experiment to a universal institution.” (The accompanying photo of a TMER&L streetcar appeared in a 1911 issue of the Electric Railway Journal.)

Over time, the streetcar lines of TMER&L ultimately connected Milwaukee with Sheboygan, Kenosha, Burlington, Watertown, and East Troy. The vast holdings of TMRER&L included shops for constructing, renovating, and repairing streetcars. This company also had its own shop for printing tickets, transfer passes, schedules, maps, and other items for streetcar passengers.

TMER&L remained in operation until 1938, when it was split into two companies. The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Transport Company focused on transit services, while the Wisconsin Electric Power Company dealt with utilities.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

For more information on the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company, please check out https://emke.uwm.edu/entry/the-milwaukee-electric-railway-and-light-company-tmerl/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milwaukee_Electric_Railway_and_Light_Company