Promontory
Summit - N 41° 37.071’ 112° 33.083’
Just 23
years after the Donner party passed through Utah on their way to meet their
ill-fated end in California and 22 years after the Mormon pioneers began to settle their new desert home; the
Central and Union Pacific Railroads met in Utah's barren desert at Promontory
Summit, 68 miles north-west of Salt Lake City, to drive the final spike in the
track that linked the eastern and western United States by rail for the first
time.
This
enormous effort to run rail-line from the prairie lands of Iowa to the coastal
state of California took 6 years to accomplish. Almost the entire work of
grading and laying track was done through hard manual labor and black powder.
Much of this hard work was performed by Chinese and Irish emigrants.
The Central Pacific
Railroad began work on
the rail-line in 1863 while Abraham Lincoln was President of the United
States and the nation was engaged in its deadliest war. They began laying tracks in
Sacramento California at the western terminus of the
Transcontinental Railroad and proceeded east over the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, followed by the state of Nevada and then into Utah,
arriving at Promontory Summit in 1869, six years after they started. The Central Pacific
Railroad laid 690 miles of track over it six year effort.
Due to
the labor and resource needs of the Civil War the Union Pacific Railroad wasn't
able to start their endeavor until 1865; two years after the Central Pacific
Railroad began. The Union Pacific Railroad started laying track at the eastern
terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad in Council Bluffs Iowa and proceeded
west across the Missouri River followed by Nebraska, the north-east corner of
Colorado, the whole of Wyoming and finally the eastern half of Utah to
Promontory Summit. The Union Pacific Railroad
arrived at Promontory Summit four years after they made their start, having laid
1087 miles of track.
The
ceremonial driving of the Golden Spike, the last spike in the completed rail
line was performed by Leland Stanford at 12:47 pm on May 10th, 1869. Stanford
was also the individual who ceremoniously broke ground at the start of the
Central Pacific Railroad’s tracks 6 years earlier in
Sacramento California while he was serving as California's Governor. 22
years after driving The Golden Spike Stanford would found Stanford University
which currently has possession of the spike.
There
doesn't appear to be an official count of how many people attended the driving
of the Golden Spike at Promontory Summit but the effect the joined rail line
had on the United States is immeasurable. The railroad allowed unprecedented
access to the west and was invaluable to the growth, settlement and commerce of
the young American nation.
However,
as is the case with almost any historically important event, the positive
effects of the Transcontinental Railroad is a matter of perspective. The rapid
expansion of the west that the rail-line provided came at a price, paid mostly
by the Native Americans who lost much of their land and lifestyle to America's
western migration. It seems almost a historical axiom that one groups progress
is another groups pain.
It is interesting to note that almost exactly
100 years after the Transcontinental Railroad was completed another huge
milestone in travel was reached. On July 20, 1969, exactly
100 years 71 days after Leland Stanford drove the spike that completed the
Transcontinental Railroad, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first
humans to land on the moon.
