Ride a 1919 Birney streetcar down the middle of Mountain Avenue
Original car, original 1907 line
A single-truck 1919 streetcar, restored by volunteers and running about a mile and a half of the old Mountain Avenue line between City Park and Old Town.
Why it's unique
Car 21 is an original 1919 Birney safety car, and it runs on a restored section of the city's first streetcar line, opened in 1907. Most heritage trolleys are a car of one vintage on track laid for the purpose; this is the car that worked this route, on the route it worked, in the grassed median of a residential boulevard rather than on a tourist loop.
The system it belonged to has its own footnote in American transit history: by the time service ended in 1951 Fort Collins was the last streetcar system in the United States still running Birney cars, and the last all-Birney system in North America. Both claims are carried in the published railway histories rather than in tourist copy.
Before you go
The season is the whole constraint. It runs May through September, weekends and holidays only, noon to 5pm, roughly every half hour. It is entirely volunteer operated, so a weekday visit in October gets you a locked car barn and nothing else.
Board at the City Park end if you want a seat, because the Old Town end fills first. The ride is short enough that the point is the car itself rather than the journey, so it is worth talking to the crew, who are the people who restored it.