The Railroad Arrives: From Ninety Miles of Buggy to Excursion Trains

Before the railroad arrived, getting to Carlsbad was a serious undertaking. The nearest rail connection was at Toyah, Texas, ninety miles to the east across rough desert terrain. Visitors and freight traveled that distance by buggy or wagon over roads that were adequate only in the loosest sense of the word.

The Pecos Valley Railroad reached the settlement in eighteen ninety-one, and the change was immediate. Freight costs fell. Goods that had been expensive to haul by wagon suddenly became affordable. The railroad company, sensing an opportunity, began running special excursion trains from the east at reduced fares, advertising the local mineral springs and the warm, dry climate of southeastern New Mexico to tourists looking for health resorts.

The excursion trains brought visitors who would not have made the journey by wagon. Some were people with respiratory ailments, drawn by the widely held belief in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that dry southwestern air could aid recovery. Others were simply looking for a western resort experience far from the crowded cities of the east.

The tourist economy ran alongside the agricultural economy during Carlsbad's early decades. The mineral springs drew visitors even before the caverns were widely known. When word of the caverns began circulating in the early nineteen hundreds, tourism shifted direction. The railroad that had carried health tourists to the springs now carried cave tourists to Carlsbad, and the town's identity began a slow transformation toward what it remains today.