Golden Spike National Historic Site

I'm just about finished reading Nothing Like It in the World, Stephen Ambrose's account of the building of the transcontinental railroad, so today I had to visit the Golden Spike National Historic site. I've been there a couple times, but in the winter, when the trains were in their shed. The engines are supposed to be done for this season, too, since it's after Labor Day, but they were out today. If you want to go, the Park Service is doing a reenactment of the driving of the golden spike at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. each Saturday though October 10 this year. Unfortunately, I didn't know this and showed up about 1:45, just as the people in costume were heading inside. Still, I got to see the trains.


This is the tail end of the reenactment of the driving of the spikes. There were actually four spikes: two gold (from California), one silver (from Nevada), and one iron with copper and gold cladding (from Arizona). After these commemorative spikes were tapped into predrilled holes in a polished wood tie and removed, regular spikes were driven into a standard tie. Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific Railroad and governor of California took the first swing and missed. Then Thomas Durant, president of the Union Pacific Railroad took a swing and missed. So an unnamed regular railroad worker actually drove in the real last spike.

This is the 119, a replica of the Union Pacific's engine. The UP was two days late to the ceremony because unpaid workers in Wyoming chained up the train and the company's president until they got paid.

The Jupiter is blowing off steam to clean the sediment and minerals from its pipes. The Central Pacific was supposed to have a fancier engine at the ceremony, but it ran into a tree that Chinese workers had dropped across the tracks in Nevada, their not knowing the train was coming, and the engine had to be replaced by this workhorse.

The UP's 119 was a coal burner, since there was little wood to burn between Omaha and the Wasatch Mountains.

The Central Pacific's Jupiter was a wood burner, since there was plenty of wood in the Sierras.

Because the competition was so intense for each company to finish the most miles of rails, the graders for each company built road bed right past each other. The Union Pacific road bed is on the right and is the one finally used on this section west of Promontory Summit. The Central Pacific graders didn't finish leveling the cutout on the left after the government decided the joining point would be Promontory Summit. The UP had planned to lay track to Wells, and the CP had planned to lay track to Echo in Weber Canyon.


This is as good a place as any for lunch on the West Auto Tour, which is on the Central Pacific road bed.


This is called Chinamen's Arch (or something like that) on the East Auto Tour. It was created by Lake Bonneville but is now used to commemorate the more than 11,000 Chinese workers on the Central Pacific Railroad. The Union Pacific hired mostly Irish immigrants, who, when they were building roadbed alongside the Chinese, threw dirt and axe handles at the Chinese and set off explosives that caused injuries. The Chinese ignored the Irish until the explosions, when they set off their own explosives that buried some Irish alive. And that was the end of the fighting between the two sets of graders.


Near Golden Spike National Historic Site is ATK (formerly Thiokol), which makes rocket engines for the military and NASA. This is a Minuteman rocket.


This is a reusable solid fuel booster for the Space Shuttle.


I think this corn near Corinne should make Jamie and Brian feel at home when they decide to move back here.