As early as 1850, speculators wanted to build a railroad from Lexington, Kentucky to Bluefield, West Virginia, to supply cheap coal for the industrial potentiality of that central Kentucky city. Although various companies were formed and reformed, no track was laid until 1886. With the increased lumbering operations at Clay City, the rail builders assumed that the commercial possibilities would be better for their new line if it passed through that town. Clay City had grown considerably since its early iron making days. A huge lumber mill was in operation there which would eventually produce over 200,000 board feet of lumber daily and become the second largest in the world. Accordingly, tracks were laid as far as Clay City by the Kentucky Union Railroad.

These were boom times for this town on the banks of the Red River, but, when the timber was used up, the great Swan and Day Lumber Mill closed its doors. No new industry appeared to replace the old one, as had happened previously after the demise of the iron works. Today, this once busy metropolis has dwindled to a sleepy segment of its former self and, in recent time, has lost its leadership to the neighboring town of Stanton, four miles to the east. Although there are almost no traces of the huge Swan and Day Lumber Mill to be seen today, one building still reflects the glory of these golden years. The old Clay City National Bank building, complete with its original safe, still stands in the center of town and now houses the Red River Historical Society Museum. Open on Sunday during the tourist season, it has a collection of both man-made and natural artifacts, many of which date from aboriginal Indian periods. Admission to the museum is free.

But while the boom was on, the railroad pushed eastward and track now reached Slade. If you exit the Mountain Parkway at Slade and head south on Route 11 in the direction of Natural Bridge State Park, look to the right, and you can still see the old wooden frame train depot not far from the road. The railroad kept building southeastward, following along the Middle Fork of the Red River. A railroad tunnel was built at McCormick, a few miles from Slade. This sandstone tunnel is less than a mile away from Natural Bridge, and the present Hemlock Lodge in the State Park sits almost directly over it.

Middle Fork was known as Graining Block Fork in the early nineteenth century, for the Indians used to grain their animal skins in the stream. Graining is a process where hair is scraped from the hides in preparation for tanning. Although Natural Bridge is less than a mile from the stream, the Indians apparently paid no attention to it. An old wagoner, long since dead, reported that his father had heard the red men call it "a hole in the wall," showing their indifference and literal frankness toward such unusual geologic features. But this also meant that the new rail line was just a little over a half mile from Natural Bridge, a coincidence that would play an important part in the later development of Natural Bridge as a tourist attraction.

About five miles south of McCormick, at a place called Torrent, the rail builders turned away from Middle Fork and dug another tunnel in the direction of the rail line's final destination at Jackson, Kentucky. The original idea of building a line through to West Virginia had long since been given up. This tunnel, the longest on the line, stretched a distance of 1100 feet. It was a hazardous tunnel to construct since it had to be dug through soft shale.

It has been generally believed that the tunnel at Torrent was built by convict labor. Tales have been told about troublesome prisoners becoming victims of shale slides. It has been suggested that such accidents were not accidents at all, but were arranged to make sure that these men would not menace society again. How much of this is true and how much is due to fertile imaginations is not definitely known. The tunnel has long since caved in, and only the entrance is visible today.

It was also at Torrent that the first attempts to utilize the area as a vacation and resort center commenced. In 1889, the construction of the first hotel in the area began there. But the big boom in the tourist business was yet to come, and apparently the railroad had not yet realized the commercial opportunities in promoting the area as a vacation center.

Although the line was completed to its final terminus at Jackson, (See Depot At Jackson) it was plagued with financial difficulties and was reorganized in 1894 as the Lexington and Eastern Railroad. In 1910, the line was purchased by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which operated it until all rail activities on the line stopped in 1942.

Several narrow gauge railroads were built in the Red River Gorge-Natural Bridge area to facilitate bringing logs down to the mainline. Some of these were no more than tramways where timber was hauled in small flatcars pulled by horses or mules. Others, where the volume warranted it, were driven by steam locomotives. A good example of such a narrow gauge steam railroad was built by the Swan and Day Lumber Company of Clay City. That company held timber rights for over 7000 acres of good hardwood forests in the area of Chimney Top Creek. In order to get the timber down to the main rail line, it commenced building a narrow gauge railroad in 1898. Its junction with the main line was at McCormick, not far from Slade; this later became known as Campton Junction. It's track went up Whittleton Branch and crossed that stream 26 times in less than two miles. Topping out on the ridge along the present Mountain Parkway, the tracks descended to Chimney Top Creek with a total track length of approximately fourteen miles. By 1905, all trees suited for commercial purposes had been cut and transported from the Chimney Top area, and the railroad was no longer needed for logging. Since there were no real all-weather roads back into the communities of Pine Ridge and Campton, plans were made to turn the logging railroad into a freight and passenger line. Taking up the tracks along the Chimney Top Creek section and extending the track from the top of the Whittleton Branch to these two small isolated towns, a narrow gauge railroad named the Mountain Central formed a year-round link between them and the outside world. In 1907, the final track was laid, with a distance of twelve miles from Campton Junction to Campton. One way fare was seventy five cents and took about an hour and twenty minutes. No great fortunes were made from the Mountain Central, known locally as the "Dinky", but it did manage to operate on a sliver of a profit for about twenty years. When Kentucky State Route 15, the first hard-surfaced, all-weather road to reach Campton, was completed in 1924, the fate of the "Dinky" was sealed. Railroad service was carried on until 1928 with ever-increasing operational losses. With no hope of restoring the railroad to profitable commercial use, it was dismantled in 1930. A few traces of this old railroad can be seen when hiking the Whittleton Branch trail today  where the little Climax engines puffed up the ridge.

A more permanent landmark of the old logging railroads is found near the present town of Nada. At the beginning of this century, extensive acreage of hard-wood forest still existed in the lower Red River Gorge. To have a rail access from the lower Gorge to the town of Nada and the main line, a railroad tunnel was dug between 1911 and 1912. The Dana Lumber Company, which built the tunnel and the logging railroad, had a large sawmill close to the junction of their tracks and the main line, a couple of miles east of Slade at Lombard. By putting the last two letters of Dana in front of the first two, the name Nada was created for the town that sprang up around the mill. Nada Tunnel is just a mile and a half beyond the town and pierces through Tunnel Ridge. When all the timber holdings had been cut, the railroad tunnel was converted for one lane automobile traffic. Today, Route 77 runs through the ridge on the well known Red River Gorge Scenic Loop Drive.

(This information and picture was taken from the book "Kentucky's Land of the Arches -The Red River Gorge" by Robert H. Ruchhoft, Copyright 1976 & 1986)