Paul & Tara Visit the National Parks: Golden Spike National Historic Site

Visited: Dec 2015
Nearby city: Brigham City, UT

By the mid-19th century, railroads had fundamentally changed everything about American life. Transport of people and goods that had taken weeks to a month could now be done in a couple of days. The location of a railroad could single-handedly make or break a town. It brought fortunes for many. By the end of the Civil War, transportation by rail really skyrocketed, and Congress began to intensely focus on completing a grand transcontinental railroad that would connect the entire country, from the East Coast to the West Coast.

For most of the 1800s, your options for travel to the West Coast to the golden hills of California were (1) an incredibly arduous overland trail by wagon across the plains, deserts, and mountains or (2) the long and expensive trek by sea all the way around South America's Cape Horn. Either way, it was a dangerous journey that would take months. Rail could make the journey much more feasible, but the task of completing that rail was a monumental effort.

A transcontinental railroad had been a dream as early as the 1830s. In the 1850s, the U.S. government started to get on board with taking on this gigantic task and started to do surveys and looked into possible locations. Eventually it was decided that the route would roughly trace the paths of the most commonly traveled trails west: Mormon, Oregon, and California Trails. The outbreak of the Civil War also necessitated a more northerly route.

Construction started in 1863, the line was built by two private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California started at Sacramento and headed east, while the Union Pacific Railroad started in Omaha and headed west.

Eventually the two rail lines met in the high desert of Promontory Summit, Utah; about 66 miles northwest of Salt Lake City. The mad rush to get to the meeting place was incredible. On April 28th 1869, over 10 miles of track was laid in a single day. Workers (most of the workers on the Central Pacific were Chinese immigrants, while most of the Union Pacific were Irish immigrants) labored long and hard hours for extremely low wages.

The transcontinental railroad officially completed on May 10, 1869. The ceremony included the driving of the final spike "the golden spike" by Leland Stanford, governor of California and President of Central Pacific Railroad. The transcontinental railroad immediately ushered the U.S. into the Industrial Age. A journey that once took nearly 6 months now took only a week, and was obviously much cheaper to travel across the country.

Golden Spike National Historic Site preserves the exact spot where this important historical event occurred. They have a great museum at the site.

a replica of the golden spike, the real one is enshrined at Stanford University

During the summer, the site holds a re-enactment of the May 1869 celebration. As a fourth grader, Tara went to the site on a field trip and participated in the re-enactment. She played the part of the choir director that sang patriotic songs. Since we visited at wintertime, the trains were in for maintenance. Our tour guide let us go to the garage to check out the locomotives. These locomotives are very intricate replicas and very cool.