Lost Burbank by Clark Wesley H. & McDaniel Michael B

Author:Clark, Wesley H. & McDaniel, Michael B. [Clark, Wesley H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2016-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Fawkes’s Folly, aka the Aerial Swallow, Burbank’s famous monorail, circa 1911. Burbank Historical Society .

You can’t fault Joseph Fawkes for not presenting his invention with a sense of occasion. On July 4, 1911, he opened his farm to the public, hired a musical ensemble (it looks like a jazz trio) and hung streamers and American flags on the Aerial Swallow. Men in bowler hats and women with parasols clustered about as Fawkes presumably made a speech on a platform. People then boarded the system, and the enormous propeller was made to spin. A photograph shows the thing apparently in motion, with somebody running alongside. (But why was he running? The Swallow reportedly had a top speed of three miles per hour—walking pace.)

Fawkes’s idea didn’t take off, mainly because mass-transportation schemes of the day faded in favor of individually owned, gasoline-powered automobiles. And when it came down to actually deciding on a scheme to get people from Burbank to Los Angeles and back, a conventional electric trolley was the chosen solution.

Fawkes’s trolley, abandoned and rusting, was dismantled in the early 1920s, probably when he sold off his property as an industrial tract in 1923.

What sort of man was Joseph W. Fawkes? To answer that question, we proceed to the next section of this chapter.

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