The piercing sound of steel grinding steel and the shrill of a whistle once resonated throughout the hills of south-central Kentucky as a passenger train approached one of the country’s top tourist attractions. For 45 years, a nine-mile track brought thousands of visitors to America’s longest cave system.
Today, the track is no more, but the route still exists for cyclists and walkers to enjoy. The wide path is a history lesson, from the original trains on display to remnants of structures and cemeteries along the way.
Meander Through Mammoth
There are no fees to enter what is now Mammoth Cave National Park. Anyone can bring their bike or a comfortable pair of shoes, and cycle or walk the nine miles where Mammoth Cave Railroad Company’s four steam engine locomotives ran from 1886 to 1931. Passengers came into Glasgow Junction-Park City on the L&N Railroad, which originated in Nashville. If they desired, they got in a red or black train car and enjoyed the short ride to the entrance of the cave system that offered many guided tours.According to the National Park Service (NPS): “The first passenger, W.F. Richardson, paid $3.00 for ticket #1350 as was recorded in the Mammoth Cave Hotel Register on November 8, 1886.”
The train made its last run in 1931, due to more people visiting Mammoth Cave by automobile.
Partakers of the modern maintained trail are treated to sights both similar and different than those experienced by train travelers. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the views out the train car windows were of rolling hills, fields of grazing livestock, and farmhouses with thriving gardens. They passed churches and even an inn. Passengers also would have clearly seen sinkholes out the train windows.
The Mammoth Cave Railroad Bike and Hike Trail, in fact, meanders through forests and up and over hills that the train once climbed. People traversing the path today can see the same deep depressions. The NPS’s park rangers inform visitors that the sinkholes were made by groundwater dissolving limestone bedrock underneath the earth’s surface. However, tourists must look for them among the trees and bushes that have overtaken the once cleared fields. Only fragments remain of the inn and some houses. Visitors can see where the train crossed the trestle at a wide-open area known as Doyle Valley.
Especially when cycling the path, it’s easy to imagine the train chugging up steep hills and gathering speed during the descent. Along the path is historic signage, a convenient place to stop, take a breather, and learn about country stores once visible from the tracks or about three families—Furlongs, Doyels, and Sloans—who are buried in a cemetery currently overtaken by ground foliage. All that’s left of Proctor’s Cave and Commodious Hotel is a bit of the foundation of concrete, iron, and scattered stones tucked among saplings and leaves.
Most interesting is the third stop along the trail. It has a sign that informs visitors of a tuberculosis hut inside a cave. The sign reads: “Dr. John Croghan create a hospital for tuberculosis patients 183 feet beneath your feet.”
Other spots along the trail indicate that far below the surface, people are actually walking around and exploring Mammoth Cave.
Besides enjoying exercise and the outdoors, Mammoth Cave Railroad Bike and Hike Trail is a plus to visiting this area. The trail offers an unexpected historical perspective that gets glossed over because the extensive cave system is the primary draw.
