July 2 - Rainbow Carverns Mine Train

Image courtesy duchessofdisneyland.com

On this day, in 1956, the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train took its first guests through the Living Desert of Frontierland in Disneyland. The Living Desert area of Disneyland, named after the Tru-Life Adventure film of the same name, was a happening place in the late Fifties. Guests could ride in stagecoaches and Conestoga wagons, opt to straddle a pack mule to tour the area or take one of two trains. The larger train was the Sante Fe and Disneyland Railroad (nowadays just the Disneyland Railroad). The smaller train was the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train and was the only way guests could see the beautiful Rainbow Caverns.

The Mine Train was a narrow gauge train that rain on a track 2 feet 7 inches wide, making it a little bigger than the Casey Jr. Circus Train over in Fantasyland, which runs on a 2 foot wide track, and a little smaller than the Disneyland Railroad which runs on a 3 foot track. All three trains are considered narrow gauge (a standard gauge train, such as Amtrak, is about 4 feet 8 inches).

In 1960, Walt decided that Disneyland’s attractions needed more humor in them (although the Living Desert always had cacti that look suspiciously like people we know) and put Marc Davis on the problem. Marc designed a major redo of the Living Desert area. The Conestoga wagons and stagecoaches disappeared and the desert area was reduced in size. The freed up space became several different ecosystems, encompassing everything from mountain peaks to valleys full of beavers to forests teeming with bears. The area was now called Nature’s Wonderland and only a few things remained untouched: the pack mules, Rainbow Caverns and the mine train.

Image courtesy pinterest.com

Now called the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland, guests boarded the train in the fictional town of Rainbow Ridge before traveling past replicas of over 200 North American animals. A recorded narration was provided by Dallas McKennon (who can still be heard giving the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad safety spiel). The ride was topped off with a trip through the Caverns before returning to Rainbow Ridge for disembarking.

And so it went for the next seventeen years. As the world lurched into the latter part of the Seventies, the public’s appetite grew for thrill rides and the shelf life of attractions like the Mine Train grew short. In 1973, Disneyland finally pulled the plug on the pack mules and the last visit to Rainbow Caverns happened in 1977. The Nature’s Wonderland area was completely transformed and became one of the parks most popular attractions today, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which opened in 1979. Eagle-eyed guests can still spot some remnants of the Mine Train in Big Thunder, though. In the queue near the loading station, there is a scaled down set up of an old mining town named Rainbow Ridge. Several of the animatronic animals throughout the ride first appeared in Nature’s Wonderland. The colorful, glowing pools of water near the first lift hill are in homage to Rainbow Caverns. And, until 2010, one of the Mine Train engines and two cars could be seen along the Rivers of America.