Bryan mayor J.T. Maloney and the city's Retail Merchants Association incorporated the Bryan & College Interurban Railway Company in 1909. The company was created to establish an interurban railway service between Bryan, a town of about 4,000 people, and the Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College (Texas A&M), with a student and faculty population of about 750. Daily service consisting of ten 30-minute trips began in 1910 with passenger trolleys and gasoline-powered rail cars. Along the route landowners built residential subdivisions and small farms, and to provide an attraction the city created Dellwood Park. Freight service began in 1918 to help bolster an operation beset with labor problems and the loss of passengers to automobile ridership. In 1922 the Bryan & College Interurban Railway went into receivership and in 1923 its assets were sold at auction to the S.S. Hunter Estate. The last recorded trip of the Interurban took place on April 13, 1923. During its 15 years of operation the Interurban Railway greatly influenced the course of Bryan's and College Station's urban development. Today the two cities merge indistinguishably at a point on the former Bryan & College Interurban Railway route.