It's funny but true: the wooden tracks upon which Long Beach's first railroad was built, in 1882, often broke under the passengers' weight. The riders had to "get out and push," thus giving the line the name of the "GOP Railroad." A single horse powered the train until 1886 when it was replaced by a steam engine.

The history of public transportation in Long Beach, one of the most beautiful cities along the shore of the Pacific Ocean, has been a unique series of firsts in the emergence of mass transit in the Southwest. In the early 1880's, the first railway line built in Los Angeles County operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad, connected Los Angeles and the port at Wilmington to a new seaside town laid out by land speculators in 1882. The American Colony Railway consisted of a three-mile wooden rail line upon which horse-drawn cars carried prospective residents and investors to the new town known as Willmore City. Unfortunately, some of the wooden rails broke under the weight of passengers, and, to get the train running again, some of them had to "get out and push." The name stuck and Long Beach's first public transportation system became known as the G.O.P. Railroad.

In 1897, the railroads chugged into town along what is now Ocean Boulevard and came to a halt by the depot adjacent to the Ocean View Hotel.

When the Santa Fe Railroad to Los Angeles was completed in 1885, it triggered a land boom. The two rival train companies engaged in fare wars that soon made it possible to make the trip from the Missouri Valley to Southern California for only $100. By 1887, over 120,000 passengers made the trip to Los Angeles on the Southern Pacific line alone. In 1888 a steam engine replaced the horse-drawn G.O.P. when the Southern Pacific laid new tracks into what is now downtown Long Beach.