The railroad was originally intended to run from Tonopah, Nevada to San Diego, California (the "tidewater"), but never made it to either on its own rails.

It was famous for being the last of the three railroads built to cross the Death Valley region, and outlasting them by over 30 years providing dedicated and reliable service to the desert residents.

To bring the borax out from this remote region, he tried to use an old steam tractor to haul the ore, but it was not suited for the harsh desert conditions and was quickly taken out of service.

Smith then considered the idea of building a railroad from the nearest point possible on the Santa Fe, to connect the Lila C. to the most intermediate route to his refineries at Alameda, California and Bayonne, New Jersey.

[4] In 1905, Francis Marion Smith immediately sent crews out to Las Vegas to begin construction of the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad.

The sharpest point in the barb poked in Smith's side, was when he was openly denied by LA&SL railroad officials to allow the T&T grade to connect to their main line.

Despite Smith's disappointment, he held no resentment for Clark, and instead went to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad to propose they use their stop at Ludlow, California as the T&T's new terminus.

Plus, building north of Ludlow would bring about more business opportunities for the T&T to profit off of, as there were plenty of mines in the area where the Tonopah & Tidewater was planned to be built.

Francis Smith sold all of his Las Vegas railroad work, graded roadbed, property and supplies to Clark, and moved immediately to Ludlow and started building the T&T with new construction material provided by the Santa Fe.

The T&T construction crews eventually reached Crucero, California by 1906, where they had to cross over the mainline of the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad.

By 1927, Pacific Coast Borax Company had moved their mining operations to Boron, located 80 miles (130 km) away from Death Valley.

The Tonopah and Tidewater had to resort to hauling lead from Tecopa, feldspar and clay from Bradford Siding, north of Death Valley Junction, along with gypsum, talc and general goods.

The Great Depression severely crippled the tourist trade for the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, and people began to use automobiles to get to and from the valley.

It was soon becoming evident that the T&T was losing too much money to keep itself afloat, maintenance costs skyrocketed due to the many floods that plagued the right-of-way in several places.

It took nearly a year for Sharp and Fellows, Inc. to remove the entire railway between Ludlow and Beatty, leaving but the old trackbed behind, and a few ties in the lonely desert.

The museum was formerly based in the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel located in Death Valley Junction, California, but has since moved to Goldfield, Nevada.

[14][15] Railroad author Phil Serpico writes in his book about the T&T, that it may have been a Baldwin-built compound 2-8-0 locomotive bought from the Philadelphia, Reading and New Eastern Railway, numbered #40.