Getting to Mammoth Cave: Stagecoach, Steamboat, Train and Car

Early twentieth-century visitors arrive by train. Mammoth Cave National Park collection.

For thousands of years, Mammoth Cave has drawn people underground. The first people found it about 5,000 years ago, arriving on foot. Since then visitors have come in many ways, all seeking their own adventure.

Stagecoach, 1830s–1880s

As Mammoth Cave became a world-famous attraction, stagecoaches became the main way in, with three lines from nearby towns.

• Rough roads: karst country is full of sinkholes; one visitor warned that a timid traveler "might be apprehensive of a sudden disappearance of the stagecoach into the bowels of the earth." Another wrote that from Cave City "the hubs of the hack-wheels rode on the mud, and it took us three hours and a half to make the nine miles."
• Robbery: in 1880, two masked men robbed a stagecoach near Little Hope Church — possibly, the evidence suggests, Frank and Jesse James.

A restored Mammoth Cave stagecoach, owned by the Mammoth Cave National Park Association, is on loan for display in the lobby of The Lodge at Mammoth Cave.

The restored horse-drawn stagecoach returns to Mammoth Cave on a rainy day in August 2023 (2 minutes, 47 seconds). NPS video.

An early steamboat on the Green River. Mammoth Cave National Park collection.

Steamboat

In the 19th century, many visitors came by steamboat on the Green River, which flows near the cave entrance, boarding at towns such as Bowling Green, Brownsville and Munfordville for a comfortable, scenic ride.

• Snags: the river was often shallow, and boats ran aground on sandbars and snags; passengers sometimes had to push or lighten the load.
• Last leg: there was no direct landing, so visitors finished by carriage or train.
• Locks and dams raised the water. Lock and Dam No. 6 opened in 1906, and the Chaperon became the first steamboat to run all the way from Evansville, Indiana, to Mammoth Cave.

The small steam engines on the Mammoth Cave line were called "dummies" because they looked like streetcars. Mammoth Cave National Park collection.

Train, 1886–1931

• By rail and coach: from the mid-1860s to 1880, some 40,000–50,000 people rode the L&N Railroad to Glasgow Junction (now Park City), then took the stagecoach.
• A line of its own: in 1874 a local stagecoach operator leased the railroad rights, and in 1880 work began on a nine-mile track from Glasgow Junction to the cave. On November 8, 1886, the first passenger, W.F. Richardson, paid $3.00.
• The "dummy" line: small steam engines, wooden coaches and combination baggage cars, stopping at Diamond Caverns, Chaumont Post Office, Proctor's Hotel and Sloan's Crossing. It ran for 45 years, until 1931.

Today the route is the Mammoth Cave Bike and Hike Trail (2004), and you can see the "Hercules" engine and Coach #2.

Early drives to Mammoth Cave meant rocky, muddy roads. Mammoth Cave National Park collection.

Automobile

On October 7, 1904, the first car reached Mammoth Cave — a dentist's, from Indianapolis. It was famous not only for being first but for getting stuck in the mud by the estate's arched entrance sign. Onlookers couldn't free it; the hotel manager came to the rescue with a pair of mules.

Early roads were dirt and rough, and rain made them worse. Still, as more people owned cars and could travel far at their own pace, tourism boomed. Today tens of thousands of vehicles arrive each year to a paved parking lot.

A world destination

Journeys that once took days or weeks now take hours, and visitors come from all over the world. However they arrive, Mammoth Cave still invites the curious into the dark. Plan your trip: directions and transportation.

Sources

Based on "Journey to Mammoth Cave," Mammoth Cave National Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The stagecoach film, embedded on the page, is restored from NPS.