In 1898, the Seattle Electric Company was granted a contract to consolidate the city's 22 separate streetcar lines and private street railways. The SEC was an arm of the national Stone & Webster utility cartel, which also controlled the city's electrical grid and operated the Puget Sound Electric Railway (PSE), an interurban line linking Tacoma, Seattle, and Everett. By 1941, most of Seattle's street rails had been pulled up due to the rise of the automobile, although as of 2018 the city has begun rebuilding some streetcar lines and light rail routes.

The Seattle Electric Company trolley trip guide pictured here includes a map of all of the street car lines, as well as histories, guides, and directions to Seattle's neighborhoods and destinations. The company offered a special "Seeing Seattle" car twice-daily for sightseers, which consisted of a three-hour round trip from Pioneer Place (now Pioneer Square) that covered "26 miles through urban and suburban wonderland." The brochure appears to have been printed prior to the construction of the Smith Tower, as it cites Queen Anne Hill's water tower observation platform as the highest point in the city, a distinction the Smith Tower held from 1914-1962.

Caption information source: "Street Railways in Seattle," by Walt Crowley, HistoryLink.org Essay 2707.