The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-10
: S s E M E R

1 odil lLdhe 1llys Mdy 5.-AGpecldis1- VI o- morrow is the thlrty-ninth anniversary of the greatest commercial event in the | history of this country. On the 10th of May. 1s69 the last spikes were driven in l the first railroad to link the great west | commercially with the rest of the United | States
 Things were very different from what | they are now on that May day 8 years ago, though the entire country, which so long had held aloof from the Pacific railroad projects. seemed to awaken at last and realize the meaning of the cere- mony which was being performed at the little railroad town of Promontory in Utah, 63s miles east of Sacramento. Few people gathered to witness the event as compared to the number that had at tended the far more imposing exercises when ground was broken in Omaha, in 1864. But the whole nation gave ear, as it were to the sound of the hammer strokes that drove home the last spikes and for the first time brought into close commercial contact the great producing region of the west and the consuming centers of the east
 All the principal offices of the eoun- try were connected by telegraph with the now forgotten town of Promontory on that day and the click of the instrument communicated to waiting thousands the resounding blows that completed the last section in the steel highway between ocean and ocean. The governor of Cali fornia had come to attend the ceremonies but from the other side of the Rockies there was the seantiest representation. The last tie to which the rails were spiked was made of highly polish Cali fornia laurel and bore silver plate with the inscription
 The Last Tie
 Laid in the Completion of the Pacific
 Railroad, May 19 1869.
 Into this were driven four spikes, two of silver and two of gold, and when they were fast and firm the great bond be- tween the Atlantic and the Pacific was welded.
 Hats offr' was the message clicked by the telegraph instruments to the east. And then, after the invocation by the Rev. Dr. Todd Of Pittsfield, the wire spread the word We have got done pray ing" Back came the answer, We un- derstand; all are ready in the east
 With that simple ceremony was com pleted the tremendous achievement of which Sidney Dillon, president of the Credit Mobelier-the company which con- structed the Union Pacfic-declared many years afterwards: Tt is not too much to say that the opening of the Pacific road, viewed simply in it's relation to the spread of population, development of resources, and actual advance of civil ization, was event to be ranked in far reaching results with the landing of the Pilgrims or perhaps the voyage of Co., lumbus"
 The old west has practically vanished and with it many of the things that made the story of the building of the first Pa cifie railroad read almost like a fantastic romance. In the first quarter century after it's completion the Union Pacific accomplished results which have in- f1uenced the whole world to a striking de- gree But today the work of that period seems crude and almost careless. No better way of understanding the difference between what has been and what is, of measuring Americas s wonderful progress in less than two generations, can be found than by comparing the first line to the coast-the Union Paciic-and the latest the Western Pacific.
 When the first Pacific line was built the engineers ran the tracks around a boulder rather than move it, and even gave way to the largest trees. Though an authority writes that the constructors of the Union Pacific bulded better than they knew, it has taken the constructive genius of a Hartman and at least $100,- 000 eco to rebuild the road and make it an efficient transportation system judged by modern standards. But not even noun tains could turn the Western Pacific en- gineers aside. In the early days it was "get there somehow" today it is "get there wisely
 The instructions given the engineers of the Western Pacific were simple and di- rect: You are to build a straight road which in no case will exceed a maximum grade of 1 per cent Thirty-nine years ago that mandate would have spelled im- possibilty today it is an accomplished fact. Indeed, on the older Pacific roads grades were as nature made them but the Western Pacific has been built in an almost unbelievable way which gives it,