Trollies, Trains, and Automobiles

This year I tried to focus my class field trips on history because our history curriculum is quite boring. A fellow teacher suggested that I look into History Park. My grade level decided to book their Historical Transportation Experience. The students experiences transportation then and now. It was a wonderful experience and probably the best field trip that I have ever been on. The students were separated into two groups. This made the experience more intimate. Each group was able to ride on an authentic trolly car around the History Park grounds.

Next, the students enter into a real working rehabilitation workshop for old cars, trollies, and trains called the Trolley Barn. There was a large steam engine, a couple old Fords, and a trolly car. The barn actually houses the trolly that the students ride around when it is not out and about. The History Park finds and purchases these beautiful pieces and refurbishes them into working order

My favorite part of the entire field trip is when the students enter into an old Bank of Italy and sit down to watch a transportation film taken in 1905. The film was taken in San Francisco and shows people walking, horse drawn carriages, cars, trollies, and horse drawn trollies all moving down the street in chaos trying to avoid each other with no street signs or sidewalks. There is one point in the movie where two boys run behind a moving car and hop onto the back. Then there is a woman who crosses the street and hops onto the trolly. It was fascinating to watch the different types of transportation interact with each other before there were real traffic laws. At the end of the field trip, the entire class took a ride up Senter Road.