Promontory Summit, UT
with others
Of all the events that helped shape our nation in the 19th century, few surpassed the importance of what took place on May 10, 1869. On that day, the dream of a transcontinental railroad became a reality when the railheads of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads finally met at Promontory Summit, Utah. The event — marked by the driving of a golden spike to complete the line — brought to a finish a grueling 7-year journey that began when President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Pacific Railroad Act on July 1, 1862.
The path to the Summit was hard-fought, perilous and competitive. In late April 1869, the Central Pacific, with teams of Irish and Chinese workers, set a record for laying 10 miles and 56 feet of track in 12 hours at Rozel, Utah. This accomplishment began as a bet with the Union Pacific, whose men had once laid seven miles of track in one stretch (although they had reportedly worked from 4 a.m. to midnight to complete the task, well beyond a regular day's work). At the time, the San Francisco Bulletin called the feat "the greatest work in track laying ever accomplished or conceived by railroad men." A top-ranking Army commander, who was watching the workers' progress with his soldiers, commented that he had never seen such organization, and that "it was just like an army marching over the ground and leaving the track built behind them."
Despite plenty of time to determine a meeting place, it was just a mere month before completion that Congress had finally passed a joint resolution naming Promontory Summit the place "at which rails shall meet and form one continuous line." The name was taken from the large promontory projecting south into the Great Salt Lake. By early May, Union Pacific crews had laid the final track from Corinne, Utah, to the Summit. Railroad officials, workers and citizens were ready for a celebration. The ceremony, however, was postponed for a few extra days due to wet weather, a washed-out bridge and a revolt by unpaid Union Pacific railroad workers who threatened to kidnap the company's vice president, Thomas Durant (a scheme possibly orchestrated by Durant himself.)
But on May 10, the rails did meet and a country was united coast to coast. Scores of dignitaries, railroad executives, and journalists witnessed the momentous event. The Daily Alta California, a 19th-century San Francisco newspaper, wrote the following day: "In the face of natural obstacles of the most forbidding character, the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific are at last practically united by an iron highway spanning the continent...From henceforth we are in the Union and of it, and the great event of the age has brought us all home at last."
Today, Promontory Summit is the home of the Golden Spike National Historic Monument. In 1870, this original junction point for Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads was moved to nearby Ogden. Promontory became primarily a helper station, housing mostly railroad workers and their families.
