While young Thomas Alva Edison was selling fruit and newspapers to customers on the train between Port Huron and Detroit, his older brother, William Pitt Edison, was operating the first public transit system in the community. The system was a single horse-drawn bus taking passengers from the train station into town. William Edison and some associates soon launched a more ambitious plan and began the Port Huron and Gratiot Street Railway Company to provide horse-drawn streetcar service along several rail routes. The present bus service began in September, 1976. Since then, the Blue Water Area Transit system has carried over 26,000,000 riders in the 104.15 square mile service area.