The route was laid out by the Pacific Electric Land Company in 1907; the company existed solely to build and lease lines for Pacific Electric to operate. Service began on July 5, 1909. Several spur lines were constructed to transport
sugar beets from farms near the route. The line came under full ownership of PE in 1911, two weeks following the
Great Merger. The service was truncated to terminate at Huntington Beach in the south starting on October 15, 1912. An evening car ran as far north as
Orange in 1915. As a result of the
1918 Spanish flu pandemic, frequencies were reduced to a single daily round trip starting on October 27 of that year. By mid-1948, Pacific Electric had purchased the requisite
Southern Pacific Railroad lines to allow them to move freight to Newport and Huntington without the trip through
Long Beach and
Sunset Beach. By the 1990s, the route through Santa Ana had largely been converted to the Pacific Electric Bicycle Path. ==Route==