West End Railway Consolidation Act is adopted.

Passed by the Massachusetts legislature, it allows Henry Whitney’s West End Railway Company to absorb six other local horse-drawn street car lines and makes Boston the first city in the U.S. with a unified transit system. It also creates the largest streetcar system in the world, with nearly 1,500 streetcars drawn by some 7,700 horses, on over 225 miles of track, transporting 100 million passengers a year. The lines subsequently extend as far as Nashua, New Hampshire, and Newport, Rhode Island. The legislation also authorizes the company to build tunnels under downtown Boston to operate subway lines.