There were livery stables for renting horses, and residents of upper-class neighborhoods like Oakwood had carriages, but most people who lived inside the city limits got around on foot.

That all began to change on Christmas Day.

That morning, Raleigh began a mule-drawn streetcar system -- converted to electricity in 1891 -- that forever changed the way residents got around the Capital City.

The electric streetcar brought Raleigh into the modern era. It came along at a time when the city's population tripled, created some of the first suburbs and gave a crucial boost to a company now called Progress Energy.

Streetcars became a part of daily life in Raleigh, in an era that some residents still recall.

Bill Hutchins, 81, remembers the day a friend who lived near the Executive Mansion on Blount Street put grease on the track, causing the streetcar to spin its wheels.

"It became a fad with the boys," Hutchins said. "The conductors had to get out and put sand on the tracks by hand."

But the streetcar also caused serious problems that the city is still dealing with today. The streetcar spurred segregation along race and class lines, led to the beginnings of urban sprawl and bled downtown of many of the residents who kept it alive.

The streetcar stopped running in 1933, but the automobile continued many of the same patterns it had set in motion. Now, with cars clogging Interstate 40 and gas prices fluctuating, Raleigh is again looking at rail-based transit.

To be sure, the Triangle Transit Authority's planned $759 million rail line connecting Raleigh and Durham is a much different project in size and scope. But it would have similar effects -- some planned, some unintentional -- on how people live.

"In a way, we've come full circle," said Raleigh Councilman Thomas Crowder.

Mule-powered mass transit

Raleigh was a compact city in 1886.

The city limits -- which had been unchanged since 1857 -- were a perfect square, bound by St. Mary's Street to the west, North Boundary Street to the north, Haywood Street to the east and near Bledsoe Street to the south.

People lived almost on top of one another -- about 13,000 lived in the 1.2 square miles inside the city limits. On any given block downtown, you could walk to church, the corner store, school and even work. But the streets were unpaved and often muddy in winter.

On Christmas Day, the city debuted its first mass transit system to solve those problems. Thousands lined the streets for a big parade down the four-mile route of a new streetcar. It was pulled by mules -- nicknamed "Texas rats" by locals for their funny-looking ears.

"I remember well the appearance of the first streetcars, drawn by mules, with tinkling bells, and the crowds of people who were attracted by the novelty, all of whom took a ride -- not that they wanted to go anywhere, but simply for the sake of the ride," Raleigh native R.C. Lawrence wrote in 1944.

The tracks ran west along Hillsborough Street as far as St. Mary's College (now a high school), north on Blount Street near the Oakwood Cemetery and down Fayetteville Street to Cabarrus Street, stopping at the railroad depot.

After the novelty wore off, the problems began. As in other towns across the country, the streetcars were uncomfortably hot or cold depending on the season, and the mules were slow and tired easily. Sometimes, they stubbornly sat in the middle of the tracks.

In 1888, the first electric streetcar system debuted in Richmond, Va., solving many of those problems. Soon, electric streetcars were all the rage, across the country and in North Carolina.

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