Travel on the Mammoth Cave Railroad was neither comfortable nor posh, but it carried thousands of passengers to the caves of central Kentucky, a destination that inspired both excitement and foreboding. They were drawn by the same lure that had attracted the first Native explorer 4,000 years earlier: the unknown. Visitors had read of the caves’ wonders through the promotion of their owners, as even Mammoth Cave was once privately owned and exhibited, as Diamond Caverns still is, and they thrilled to the supposed terrors preserved in the awed accounts of earlier travelers. Visiting the caves became a generational tradition, as people who had marveled at them as children returned with their own children, who later brought theirs, and many made the journey by train. The tradition continued long after the railroad ceased operating, and families still return today. Diamond Caverns, one of the oldest show caves in the region, was operated during the time of the Mammoth Cave Railroad by Larkin Procter, who was related by marriage to the family that operated Mammoth Cave, while his brother George Procter ran Bell’s Tavern to the south. Its entrance portal remains in use, and Diamond Caverns is noted for a denser display of cave formations than Mammoth Cave, complementing Mammoth’s vast dry passages.