In the late 1840s, construction of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad was already in progress and had reached the base of the plateau below Sewanee. In 1853, Major A.E. Barney, a civil engineer, was commissioned to designed a spur rail line to carry coal from the mines of the Plateau to market, beginning in Sewanee and, over time, extending to Tracy City, Coalmont, Gruetli-Laager, and Palmer.

Barney’s “Mountain Goat Railroad” earned its name due to its steep climb up onto the Cumberland Plateau from Cowan. At the time, it was the steepest railroad grade in the world.

In its heyday, the Mountain Goat line ran 3 or 4 trains a day with both coal and passenger cars. It stopped running passenger cars in 1971 and freight trains in 1984. CSX officially abandoned the line in 1985 and removed the tracks in 1986.

In the early 2000s, the Mountain Goat Trail Alliance was formed to transform nearly 40 miles of the former rail bed into a paved, multi-modal trail.