Train service was inaugurated in Paducah on July 4th, 1854, over seven miles of the New Orleans and Ohio Railroad. The line was extended to Hickory, Kentucky by the fall of 1854, and to Mayfield the next year, and ran through Feliciana, in Graves County (which is no longer on the map) and was completed to Gibbs, Tennessee, the only railroad out of Paducah for the next eighteen years. Control of the railroad was desired by both Federal and Confederate forces during the Civil War; as a result, Camp Beauregard, near Water Valley, Ky was a strong fortification of Southern troops in the early months of the war.