by Steve

May 10, 1869.  Promontory Summit, Utah. The driving of the golden spike completed the trans-continental railroad, which finally enabled travel from one coast of the US to the other by train. I always knew the date of the event as it's the same as Jane's birthday (but a different year). But there are a lot of other odd things about the whole enterprise of building a cross-country railroad that we didn't know. In our visit to Golden Spike National Historic Park, we learned a lot. 

Here are some odd facts you might not know:

1. Delayed by war; jump-started with bribes. The track was built by two competing railroad companies. The Central Pacific (CP) started in Sacramento California and headed east; the Union Pacific (UP) began in Omaha and built to the west. In the first year of work, not much was accomplished; it was hard to get financial backing because investors could make more money on the Civil War than by investing in railroads. After the presidents of the CP and the UP visited Congress with sacks of money, Congress wrote a new railroad act that doubled the subsidies to the railroad companies. After this, the pace of work picked up.

2. Built primarily by immigrants. The war impacted the workforce, so both companies hired mostly immigrants to do the actual labor. The CP had a few additional challenges: difficult terrain (they had to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains at Donner pass, which required them to dig 15 tunnels through solid granite), and the California gold rush. According to one source, Californians were disinclined to the level of discipline required by the railroad companies. As a result, 90% of the CP workforce came from China.

3. Thirsty engines. Promontory Summit, where the two sets of track meet, is on the north side of the Great Salt Lake. The north side of the Salt Lake has steep grades that necessitated numerous cuts (through hills) and fills or trestles. And it was longer than going along the south side of the lake. So why take the longer, more difficult route? Steam locomotives require a lot of water to operate. While they hold around 2,000 gallons, this will only get them 20 to 30 miles. So they need a source of water every 20-30 miles along the route, and the south side of the Great Salt Lake has no water along it. If you think that the range of an electric car might be limiting, imagine needing to stop for 2,000 gallons of water every 20 miles!

4.  Milking the subsidies. Each railroad had a team that surveyed the route, then a team that built the grades, and then a team that laid the track. The railroad companies got government subsidies when the grades were built, and the railroad act allowed the grading to be up to 300 miles ahead of the track laying. As the CP and UP teams neared each other, there was no decision either by the companies or by Congress on where the two tracks should meet. So the grading teams passed each other and built grades side-by-side, often within 50 feet of each other. Ultimately 250 miles of parallel grades were built before Congress found out and set the location for the railroad to meet at Promontory Summit. Both grades are still visible today, 150 years later. You can take a driving tour on the CP grade to see things like this sign posted to commemorate a bet that the CP team won.

At one point, the UP had laid 8.5 miles of track in one day, and bet the CP $10,000 that they couldn't beat that record. The CP waited until the UP was less than 10 miles from Promontory Summit, and then proceeded to lay 10 miles of track in a day. The UP could not beat this new record as they had less than 10 miles to go.

5. The reason the site was chosen. The completion of the track was a big deal--the entire country was following the progress. So you might think that the location of the final track laying and ceremony might be chosen with some care. But it's in the middle of nowhere--then and now. Congress designated Promontory as the site for the ceremony because it was about half way between the two ends of track at the time that Congress discovered that the railroad companies were milking the subsidies. (See point 4.)

6. The wrong train showed up for the ceremony. The president of the CP, Leland Stanford, traveled to the site of the meeting for the historic ceremony in his private train. To ensure that the track was clear in the work zone, Stanford's train followed a "regular"--a scheduled train that workers were expecting. But apparently nobody told the workers, so when the "regular" passed, they rolled construction materials onto the track, which, of course, Stanford's train hit. So Stanford had to switch to the "regular" locomotive, which happened to be a locomotive called the Jupiter. Fortunately for today's tourists, the Jupiter was a beautiful and photogenic locomotive, as you can see from this photo of the replica.

7. The ceremony happened on the wrong day. It was scheduled for May 8, but the vice president of the UP telegraphed to say that he had been unavoidably detained. What he didn't say was that his engine had been chained and locked to the rail in Laramie, Wyoming, by unhappy sub-contractors who had not been paid in four months. He was not allowed to proceed until he had wired payment to his contractors. Can you imagine a successful businessman today who stiffs his sub-contractors?

8. A swing and a miss--twice. The whole country had been following the progress of the work, and since the railroads were also stringing telegraph lines as they built the track, the whole country could be notified via telegraph when the final spike had been driven. The ceremonial spike (bearing the date of May 8) was made of gold, and the sledge-hammer to pound it in was wired to the telegraph, which would send a signal as it was hit. The president of the CP took a try at driving in the spike and missed. Then the vice president of the UP tried, and he also missed. So a railroad worker was pulled from the crowd and he drove the spike in. The identity of this worker has never been known.

The tracks are no longer here. The route was changed to cross the Great Salt Lake on a causeway in 1902, and the tracks were pulled up to be used in the war effort for WWII. But the grades and fills are all still there, and you can drive on part of the CP grade. The UP grade was abandoned within a year of completion, so it has deteriorated a bit. But you can hike a portion of it and see the cuts and fills that the grading teams created. Just be careful as there are rattlesnakes that live in the area. We hiked it safely, but we now know exactly what a rattlesnake sounds like.