Touch of Gold

Out in the West one often finds a bright spot around the bends in the long dusty roads. Sometimes, after looking endlessly at the map, hoping for a place to take a break, you come across a place where history is commemorated.

While continuing through Utah, the Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory Point was another stop we found very interesting.

We arrived in the heavy heat of late afternoon, just in time to view part of the last showing of an informative video in the Visitor Center. Then, watching the demonstration of the Jupiter steam engine before she shunted off to her nightly rest in a round house hidden in the landscape, we sensed how this important day must have been................May 10, 1869.



Spanning a Continent...............................

By the time America's first small railroads were operating in the 1830's, people envisioned transcontinental travel by rail. The Central Pacific railroad from the West and Union Pacific from the East employed 8,000-10,000 men to build the railroad across the country. Irish, Italian, German, ex-slaves, American Indians and Chinese workers were a volatile mix in the "Hell-on-Wheels" towns thrown up near the base camps.
Congress finally declared the meeting place of the two railroad tracks to be Promontory Summit, Utah, and two locomotives - Central Pacific's Jupiter and Union Pacific's No. 119 - pulled up to the one rail gap left in the track on May 10, 1869. With much ceremony, a golden spike was symbolically tapped and the final iron spike was driven to connect the railroads.

The Central Pacific laid 690 miles of track, the Union Pacific 1,086. They had crossed 1,776 miles of desert, rivers and mountains to bind together East and West.

Jasmin and the Golden Spike.


The railroads tied the West to the eastern states. They altered the very pace of life. Politics and the economy were forever changed. Travel into the West became safe and comfortable, visitors from the eastern states and Europe toured the New America.

Have you taken a train across America? Do you prefer trains to planes?