Qualla: Mona Island Tramway

Mona Island Tramway: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1925, a donkey named Macario hauled a wagon up a narrow-gauge rail track on one of the most remote islands in the Caribbean, shaded by a makeshift canopy rigged over the car. The rails beneath his hooves were already crumbling -- twenty-two years old and never designed to last this long. Within two years, an automobile road would replace the tramway entirely, and Macario's daily commute would become a footnote in the industrial history of a place most people have never heard of. But for three decades, this improbable 1.8-kilometer railway was the only way to reach the Mona Island Lighthouse.

Read more: Mona Island Tramway on Qualla

Mona Island Tramway: Up Through the Cave

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The engineering challenge was vertical. Mona Island's coastline is a wall of limestone cliffs, and the lighthouse sat on the plateau 37 meters above sea level. Getting building materials from ship to summit required a system that was part railway, part cave passage, part staircas...

Read more: Mona Island Tramway on Qualla

Mona Island Tramway: Storm Damage and Stubborn Rails

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A storm destroyed the loading facilities at Playa La Escalera, forcing operations to shift to Playa Pajaros -- five kilometers farther down the coast, a significant detour on an island with no roads. Then the hurricane of September 1921 tore off the roof of a lighthouse storage r...

Read more: Mona Island Tramway on Qualla

Mona Island Tramway: French Rails on a Spanish Island

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The lighthouse itself was prefabricated -- designed and delivered by the French construction company Stapfer de Duclos & Cie. Because the components came from France, historians believe the tramway used Decauville portable track with a metric gauge rather than the imperial gauge ...

Read more: Mona Island Tramway on Qualla

Mona Island Tramway: Guano Lines and Rusting Memory

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The lighthouse tramway was not the only rail system on Mona. Other narrow-gauge lines served the island's guano mining operations, threading into coastal caves where bat droppings had accumulated for centuries into a valuable fertilizer. Most of those rails were removed over time...

Read more: Mona Island Tramway on Qualla