So you think you know Charlotte? If you ride the vintage trolley from South End to Ninth Street, you'll see a city you hardly recognize.

First, you'll discover it is surprisingly clean and pretty. The once ramshackle railroad corridor has been primped and planted for eye appeal, with attractive new trolley stations lining the route.

Second, you'll notice that properties along the way are either new or recently renovated, converting one of the oldest parts of the city into something startlingly modern.

Third, the crowds riding -- or waiting to ride -- the trolley suggest that Charlotte has something distinctive to offer, like the cable cars of San Francisco. The trolley adds charm to what once was a derelict part of town.

What's missing on most days (Charlotte Trolley docents are only aboard on weekends) is any hint that you're traveling through the heart of Charlotte's history. Some of the city's most significant events, most prominent citizens and most important industries once enlivened the trolley corridor.

For instance, the railroad that carries the trolley from South End also carried the first trains into Charlotte in 1852. Their arrival helped to make Charlotte the center of the cotton-growing, cotton-ginning, cotton-shipping industry in the Carolinas.

At Carson Boulevard, up the knoll to the west, stood the entrance to the Rudisill Mine which, before the coming of the railroads, was the centerpiece of Charlotte's gold mining industry and helped to bring us a branch of the U.S. Mint.

West of the track beyond Morehead Street stood the mansion and outbuildings of John L. Morehead, a planter and industrialist who gave Morehead Street its name. To the east of the track stood the home of Stuart Cramer, who came here to head the U.S. Mint, became a leader in cotton manufacturing and helped to invent air conditioning.

On the east side of the track at Hill Street was the home of Samuel A. Harris, an auctioneer and constable who was mayor of Charlotte as the Civil War came to an end. He welcomed Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Cabinet to town and later turned the city over to the occupying Union Army.

Just west of the tracks at Stonewall Street, where the new Convention Center stands, was Charlotte's first gas works, where coal was converted to the gas that illuminated city streets, homes, hotels and churches.

On the west side of the railroad between Third and Fourth Streets stood a long platform nicknamed "The Wharf. " From the 1850s to the 1910s, farmers brought cotton there to be weighed, sold and shipped.

The office of cotton broker Robert M. Oates, who built Charlotte's first cotton mill in the 1880s, stood beside the railroad at East Trade, where the old Convention Center stands today.

At Trade Street, where the South Carolina Railroad met the North Carolina Railroad in 1854, the tracks had differing widths, requiring everything going through the city in each direction to be unloaded and reloaded onto other cars. When an ailing Robert E. Lee passed through town just before his death, he had to change trains in the middle of the night and in a pouring rain.

West of the track between Trade and Fifth streets, where the Bank of America parking garage is today, was the city's 1870s ice house and the Rock Island Mill, one of Charlotte's early woolen manufacturers.

Between Fifth and Sixth streets was the home of John Asbury, who ran a planing mill and lumber yard, and beside him was the home of lawyer Zebulon B. Vance, North Carolina's most beloved governor and U.S. senator.

There are lots of other bits of history to note: the trolley's association with E.D. Latta and the development of Dilworth, a railroad roundhouse that stood east of the trolley tracks between Second and Third streets, the livery stables of J.W. Wadsworth that were west of the tracks between Eighth and Ninth, and just beyond Ninth, the Charlotte Female Institute, which gave College Street its name.

The trolley has restored life -- and raised property values -- along the old rail corridor.

The parking lots that now line the tracks north of Seventh Street soon will be replaced by new development. And ultimately, the trolley will extend beyond Ninth Street, perhaps all the way to NoDa, connecting the South End arts district with its rival to the north -- and writing another chapter of Charlotte history.