Promontory Summit

 

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.

Promontory Summit Maps and Profile