page_title: Promontory, Utah
section_title: Golden Spike
hierarchical_section_title: Promontory, Utah / Golden Spike
caption_attribution_description: English: The painting depicts the ceremony of the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, UT, on May 10, 1869, joining the rails of the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad.
context_page_description: Promontory is an area of high ground in Box Elder County, Utah, 32 mi west of Brigham City and 66 mi northwest of Salt Lake City. Rising to an elevation of 4,902 feet above sea level, it lies to the north of the Promontory Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. It is notable as the location of Promontory Summit, where the First Transcontinental Railroad from Sacramento to Omaha in the United States was officially completed on May 10, 1869.
  By the summer of 1868, the Central Pacific had completed the first rail route through the Sierra Nevada mountains, and was now moving down towards the Interior Plains and the Union Pacific line. More than 4,000 workers, of whom two thirds were Chinese, had laid more than 100 mi of track at altitudes above 7,000 ft. In May 1869, the railheads of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads finally met at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. A specially-chosen Chinese and Irish crew had taken only 12 hours to lay the final 10 mi of track in time for the ceremony.
context_section_description: Promontory Summit, Utah Territory had been agreed upon as the point where the two railheads would officially meet, following meetings in Washington, D.C. in April 1869, where it was also agreed that a ceremony would be held to drive in the Last Spike to commemorate the occasion. However, the original date of May 8 had to be postponed for two days because of bad weather and a labor dispute on the Union Pacific side. Over 400 laid-off unpaid graders and tie cutters chained U.P.R.R. Vice-President Thomas Durant's dignitary railcar to a siding in Piedmont, Wyoming until he wired for money to pay them. After almost a two-day delay, when Durant's train arrived at the Devil's Gate Bridge in Wyoming, floodwaters turned a mild creek into a raging torrent, which threatened to collapse the railroad bridge. The engineer would not take his locomotive, whose number is lost to history, across the rickety structure, but he gave each of the passenger cars a hefty heave and they coasted across, but Durant no longer had a way to get to Promontory. A hasty telegraph to Ogden, Utah Territory sent Union Pacific's engine "119" to the rescue. After a hearty party in Ogden the night of May 9, the dignitaries arrived at Promontory Summit on the morning of May 10, where the Golden Spike Ceremony was finally planned and took place, with the last iron spike driven at 12:47 PM.
  The trains carrying the railroads' officials were drawn by Union Pacific's No. 119 and Central Pacific's No. 60 (officially named the Jupiter) locomotives, neither of which had been originally chosen for the ceremony.  The Central Pacific had originally chosen their no. 29 Antelope to attend the ceremony, while the Union Pacific had also chosen another, unidentified engine for their train, but both engines encountered mishaps en route to the ceremony.  On May 10, the Jupiter and 119 were drawn up face-to-face on Promontory Summit, separated only by the width of a single tie. It is unknown how many people attended the event; estimates run from as low as 500 to as many as 3,000 government and railroad officials and track workers. Historians opine that the lack of Chinese workers seen in the official portrait was due to racism, since anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States prevailed over many decades including the late 1860s.  Their absence may have been the result of the timing of the famous photograph:  
  The more famous A.J. Russell photograph could not include the Chinese workers photographed earlier participating in the joining of the rails ceremony, because at the moment the famous photo was being taken it was after the conclusion of the ceremony and the Chinese workers were away from the two locomotives to dine at J.H. Strobridge's boarding car, being honored and cheered by the CPRR (Central Pacific Railroad) management.
  Three of the eight Chinese workers who brought up the last rail were guests of honor at the Promontory Summit's golden anniversary celebrations in Ogden, Utah in May 1919.
  The event at Promontory Summit was billed as the "wedding of the rails" and was officiated by the Reverend John Todd. Four precious metal spikes were ceremoniously driven (gently tapped with a special spike maul sporting a solid silver head into pre-drilled holes in the Laurelwood tie); one was the golden spike issued by Californian David Hewes, one was a second solid gold spike issued by the San Francisco Newsletter Newspaper, one was a solid silver spike issued by the State of Nevada, and one was an iron spike plated with silver on the shaft and gold on the top issued by Arizona Territory and presented by Arizona Territorial Governor Anson P.K. Safford from the Territorial Capitol of Prescott. In 1898, the golden spike was donated to the Leland Stanford Junior University  Museum. The second Golden Spike and the Laurelwood Tie were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which also destroyed the San Francisco Newsletter Newspaper Offices where these artifacts were on display. Stanford University loaned the original 1869 gold spike to Cecil B. DeMille for the film Uni
caption: The Last Spike by Thomas Hill,  (1881)
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