In 1826, after Pennsylvania funded a railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia and authorized a canal from Hollidaysburg to Columbia, businessmen in Elizabethtown, Middletown, and Mount Joy feared losing traffic on the main road between Lancaster and Harrisburg and built their own railroad parallel to the highway through stock subscriptions. By 1836, the line between Lancaster and Harrisburg was complete except at Red Hill southeast of Elizabethtown, where steep terrain required a tunnel through hard rock. Until the tunnel was finished, trains from Harrisburg stopped at Elizabethtown and trains from Lancaster halted near Rheems, with passengers traveling by coach between them, and later over a temporary track across the hill in horse-drawn cars. Crews worked from both ends of the planned 900-foot tunnel while a third crew dug a 92-foot shaft from the top and excavated outward from the center, hauling rock up by hand. Completed in 1838, the tunnel was an engineering feat and one of the first of its kind. In 1857, the Pennsylvania Railroad acquired the canal line between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, and in 1861 it leased the Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mount Joy and Lancaster Railroad for 999 years, making Elizabethtown a stop on the most important railroad in America; the line remains an important cross-state corridor. Elizabethtown's first station stood on West High Street where White Oak Mills is today, then by 1869 moved to the Railroad Hotel on West Bainbridge Street, where it remained until 1900. In 1889, the Pennsylvania Railroad built the present two-track line on a new elevated roadbed that roughly paralleled the old route, replaced the old tunnel with a deep open cut, and created underpasses at Bainbridge Street and West High Street. With that elevated line, the station moved to a third site west of the tracks, about 1000 feet northwest of the original location. In 1915, the present station was built in an architectural style similar to the Masonic Village buildings; although the building closed in the early 1970s, Elizabethtown remained a passenger stop, and in 2011 renovations for ADA compliance and historic preservation reopened the station building for public use.