During the first 50 years of Mammoth Cave tourism, much of Kentucky was considered the American West. The road leading to Mammoth Cave was sometimes as rugged as the primitive trails within it.
In 1859, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad was established between those two cities; a spur line to the cave was completed in 1886. At $3.00 per ticket, the Mammoth Cave Railroad brought visitors 8.7 miles from Glasgow Junction (now Park City) to the mysterious Mammoth Cave. Along the way, visitors were offered the chance to stop off at other local landmarks - Diamond Caverns, Grand Avenue Cave, and Procter Cave.
The landscape was dotted with rolling hills, sinkholes, patches of forest, wooden farmhouses, livestock, and cultivated fields. One of four "dummy" 04-2T-type steam engines pulled a wooden coach or wooden combination baggage/coach car up the Chester Escarpment, gaining 200 feet in elevation in less than one mile. A series of hills took the little train over a trestle at Doyle Valley and on up to the Mammoth Cave Estate and Hotel. Cave visitors, local families, and even wedding parties saw the sprawling Kentucky landscape from dusty glass windows adorning the cars of the Mammoth Cave Railroad.
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