Bilbo Jitney Line, Headquarters Site

Jitneys reached Dallas in January 1915 and, by a streetcar manager's count reported in the Dallas News, numbered more than 500 a month later. Streetcar companies disliked nickel rides that undercut their fares, so the city required drivers to post a bond, hold a chauffeur's license and keep passengers off the car doors. Victor Bilbo began driving for operator V. G. Schrader that year, then bought Schrader's two Model T touring cars for $160. His routes west ran along Commerce Street and Eagle Ford Road until the Railroad Commission gained authority over bus service in 1927.

What the plaque says

Bilbo Jitney Line, Headquarters Site In 1915, when public transportation was non-existent in the western part of Dallas, Victor Clifford Bilbo (1894 - 1968) began operating a jitney (small bus) line from downtown to Cement City, Gates, Sowers, Irving, and other outlying communities. Paying five cents per ride, passengers often sat three deep and hung on running boards of Bilbo's Model T Ford touring cars. He often took people to hospitals and funerals free of charge. In August 1927, because of new state franchise laws, the Bilbo jitneys were replaced by buses. 1974, 1989

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 1.7 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.3 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 2.9 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 4.2 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• La Reunion — 1.5 mi
• La Reunion Cemetery — 1.6 mi
• Site of First Ferry and Bridge — 1.7 mi
• Alexander Cockrell_Sarah Horton Cockrell — 1.7 mi