Sam Rosen was a Polish Immigrant who became a land promoter after the packing houses were locating in North Fort Worth. Sam saw the potential for home sites and bought land and laid out city lots for Rosen Heights.
There were very few automobiles at the time, and rapid transportation in the form of streetcar service was needed for the success of his land development.
Nortern Texas Traction company was not interested in extending their lines. Undaunted, Sam and his partners decided to built their own system. They starting at the 2800 block of Azle Avenue and built toward Exchange and Main.
In 1903, Tarrant County granted a franchise to the newly organized Fort Worth and Rosen Heights Street Railway Company. The City of North Fort Worth also gave the new company a franchise to sell electricity in its boundaries. They erected a powerplant at Azle Avenue and 26th street.
They also receuved a franchise from the City of Fort Worth to build a line from 17th street down Commerce to Fourth, west to Throckmorton, then north to Bluff Street. At Bluff, they built west down the hill on what was then Franklin Street (behind the present County Jail and Tandy Parking Lot) to the river bank.
At the bottom of the hill, the track made a complete turn to the right, back to the east and crossed the river on a suspension bridge and then hence to North Main Street.
North Texas Traction Company already had a double track line down the middle of North Main all the way to Exchange Avenue. Rosen and his crews added a third track on the west side of the street.
At Main Street and Exchange Avenue, NTTC's track turned left to go up the hill. At that point, they refused to let the Rosen build across their tracks to connect the ends of his line.
One bitterly cold January night after the streetcars quit running, Sam Rosen, became one of Fort Worth's legends when he and his men cut the NTTC tracks and installed a crossover. It is said he kept them warm with whiskey at the nearby Lowenstein's Saloon.
It was open country between the Stockyards and downtown Fort Worth. The motormen of the competing companys had some pretty good races in those two miles to town. You can almost hear the the motors humming, the wires singing, the bells clanging and the passengers cheering.
Eventually, NTTC did take over operation of the Rosen Heights line, and the extra track was removed from the west side of Main Street.
Some information for this story came from And Work Was Less . . . , a history of Texas Electric Service Company, by Vance Gillmore.
Sam Rosen's grandson, a Fort Worth attorney with the same name, said, "A lady named Margaret Dewar worked for my father and grandfather for 68 years. Everyone called her 'Miss Maggie.' When I was a boy, I worked around the office after school. Anytime the lights dimmed, she would quip, 'The belt must be slipping.'
"One time I asked her why she said it. She told me, 'When we owned the light plant, the belt from the engine to the generator would often get loose and slip. When it did, the lights would dim, and your grandfather knew he had go over to the plant and tighten it back up'."