Once the largest transit operator in the city, the company folded in 1944 and its assets and services were acquired by the city-owned San Francisco Municipal Railway.

The company should not be mistaken for the current Market Street Railway, which is named after its predecessor but is actually a legally unconnected non-profit support group for San Francisco's heritage streetcar lines.

The line was the first railway to open in San Francisco, commencing service on July 4, 1860 as the Market Street Railroad Company.

[8] Following the opening of the cable hauled Clay Street Hill Railroad in 1873, pressure grew to convert the city's horsecar lines to the new form of traction.

[9] However transit technology was still moving on, and the new electric streetcar quickly proved to be cheaper to build and operate than the cable car, and capable of climbing all but San Francisco's steepest hills.

In 1902, the Southern Pacific Railroad sold their San Francisco railways to a group of eastern investors: Patrick Calhoun's Baltimore Syndicate.

[11][12] Conversion to electricity was resisted by opponents like Rudolph Spreckels and other property owners who objected to what they saw as ugly overhead lines on the major thoroughfares of the city center.

[13] The San Francisco graft trials were a series of attempts from 1905 to 1908 to prosecute both government officials accused of receiving bribes.

[3] Competition, labor troubles and a bad accident in 1918 led to the reorganisation of the URR, to re-emerge again as the Market Street Railway Company.

[24] The line ran from a connection with the San Mateo interurban at Leipsic Junction, south of the cemeteries, down Grand Avenue to Fuller Paints.