Golden Spike National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service) Contact Us The Joining of a Nation May 10, 1869 the Union and Central Pacific Railroads joined their rails at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory and forged the destiny of a nation. Golden Spike National Historic Site shares the stories of the people and settings that define the completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad. Read More Golden Spike | Utah.com This historic site witnessed one of the most important accomplishments of the 19th century. On May 10, 1869, officials of the Central Pacific Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad met here to drive four symbolic spikes (two gold), celebrating the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. The Last Spike Ceremony is reenacted every year on the May 10th anniversary, as well as every Saturday and Holiday from May 10th to September, and at the annual Railroader's Festival held the second Saturday in August and during the Winter Steam Festival on the last weekend in December. (Schedule subject to change. Please check for updates.) Working replicas of the 1860's steam locomotives 'Jupiter' and '119' are in operation from May-September.

(Schedule subject to change.) There is an easy, flat 1.5 mile/2.4 km trail called the Big Fill Walk at Golden Spike. Rangers offer talks daily from May 31 to September 1. Visitors can also drive two self-guided auto tours at the site. (The West Auto Tour is a 14-mile round trip, the East Auto Tour is about a 2 mile loop.) First transcontinental railroad is completed - May 10, 1869 - HISTORY.com First transcontinental railroad is completed Share this: First transcontinental railroad is completed Author First transcontinental railroad is completed URL Publisher A+E Networks At Promontory, Utah, California Governor Leland Stanford pounds in a ceremonial golden spike that completes the nation’s first transcontinental railway. After failing to hit the spike on his first attempt, Stanford raised the heavy sledgehammer again and struck a solid square blow. For the first time in American history, railways linked together east and west, the realization of a dream that began two decades earlier. Americans had been enthusiastic railroaders long before the transcontinental line was built. In 1850, more than 9,000 miles of track covered the United States.

By 1860, the number had risen to over 30,000 miles, more miles of rail than the rest of the world altogether. Initially, most of the construction had been in the nation’s growing industrial centers in the Northeast, but by 1860, railways were rapidly expanding into the upper Midwest. Congress began considering how best to support the building of a transcontinental line in the late 1840s. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 made the issue all the more urgent: only a transcontinental railway could effectively tie that far-off region to the rest of the nation. Northern and southern politicians, however, disagreed over where the line should be constructed, and the project stalled for more than a decade. The outbreak of the Civil War finally broke the stalemate. Unencumbered by southern objections, northern legislatures approved a central route from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California. More importantly, in 1862 and 1864 Congress passed acts that gave huge cash subsidies and land grants to private companies that agreed to build the tracks across the continent. Recognizing a moneymaking opportunity, two companies took up the challenge.

The California-based Central Pacific began laying tracks eastward from Sacramento. The eastern-based Union Pacific began in Omaha and built west. The laborers working for the Central Pacific faced the greater challenge-building across the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains. As a result, their progress was naturally slower than that of the work force of the Union Pacific, who managed to average a mile a day over mostly flat terrain. The Central Pacific crew was primarily Chinese immigrants, while Irish immigrants dominated the Union Pacific. Toward the end of the project, the two sides engaged in a bitter rivalry that at times took on unpleasant racist overtones. Both groups, however, labored heroically in difficult and frequently dangerous conditions, often working as long as 15 hours each day. When the two lines connected at Promontory in northern Utah, it was the beginning of a dramatic transformation of the West. A 3,000-mile journey that had previously taken months to complete could now take only days by rail. More importantly, the abundant resources of the West could be shipped quickly and profitably to insatiable eastern markets, greatly spurring the development of the western economy.

In years to come, thousands of emigrants rode the rails westward to homestead land, encroaching on Native American territories and hastening the demise of their way of life. Perhaps more than any other single event, the completion of the transcontinental railroad enabled the American conquest and settlement of the West. Related Videos Railroads in Utah Railroads in Utah Don Strack Utah History Encyclopedia Historians agree that the driving of the golden spike marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah, on 10 May 1869 was one of the most important events in United States history, as it was also in Utah history. In fact, 1869 is considered to be a benchmark year in Utah history--the pioneer era coming to an end with the coming of the railroad. Brigham Young, as community leader and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, foresaw the impact that the coming of the railroad would have and wanted the transcontinental rail line built through Salt Lake City. He was aware of the role that a railroad could play in tying a community together as well as connecting a region with the outside world.

After representatives of both the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific met with him and explained the difficulty and extra expense of a route through Salt Lake City, Young accepted the decision and helped wherever he could to speed the completion of the project, including arranging for the use of local contractors for the construction of the tracks across the territory. Asian man with wheelbarrow, constructing Railroad The construction of a connecting railroad line south to Salt Lake City, and later into almost all parts of the state, had a much larger impact on the local populace than did the joining of the rails at Promontory. In early 1869, prior to the completion of the transcontinental railroad, Mormon Church leaders began working on the organization of a connecting railroad between Ogden and Salt Lake City. In January 1870 that line was completed, connecting Salt Lake City to the national rail system. One of the benefits that the Mormon Church received from the coming of the railroad was the availability of low-cost transportation that would help to bring large numbers of its members to the new Zion. From places as distant as Europe, new members came by way of the ports of call along the East and Gulf coasts.

The Union Pacific was the first of the major railroad companies to successfully build within Utah's borders, connecting with the Central Pacific tracks at Promontory in 1869. Twenty years later, Union Pacific had become the largest railroad company in the territory. In 1889 the Union Pacific consolidated the control of its interests in Utah and Idaho through the organization of the Oregon Short Line and Utah Northern Railway. In 1893, however, Union Pacific was forced into bankruptcy along with its subsidiary railroad companies. The Oregon Short Line emerged from bankruptcy in 1897 as an independent company, and the reorganized Union Pacific emerged from bankruptcy in 1898. The former Oregon Short Line had controlled much of the traffic that the Union Pacific depended on, and the new situation was no different. Within two years, the new Oregon Short Line was again under the full control of the reorganized Union Pacific. The Union Pacific lines west from Evanston, Wyoming, down Weber Canyon to Ogden follow the original Union Pacific route into Utah. The Oregon Short Line routes in Utah included the Union Pacific lines between Salt Lake City and Ogden, as well as the lines north of Ogden.

The lines operated by the Union Pacific south and west of Salt Lake City were originally those of the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, which completed its route to Los Angeles in 1905. Instead of building a new route through Utah, in 1903 the Los Angeles and Salt Lake purchased the former Utah and Pacific Railroad line between Milford and the Nevada state line, that was completed in 1899. The new company also purchased the former Utah Central/Utah Southern line between Salt Lake City and Milford, completed in 1880. Both lines were purchased from the Oregon Short Line Railroad, which had purchased the Utah and Pacific line in 1901. Also included in this 1903 sale was the Oregon Short Line's new standard-gauge line west of Salt Lake City, called the Leamington Cut-off. Completed in 1903, the new line ran west from Salt Lake City and then south through Tooele before it connected with the former Utah Southern route at Lynndyl. The new line roughly paralleled the former narrow-gauge Utah Western Railway, completed in 1877 between Salt Lake City and a point just north of Stockton called Terminus.

Union Pacific gained control of the Utah Western in 1881 and reorganized the company as the Utah and Nevada Railway. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway completed its narrow-gauge line between Colorado and Salt Lake City in March 1883; it was extended to Ogden two months later. The company was reorganized in 1889 as the Rio Grande Western Railway to enable it to finance the conversion of its line from narrow gauge to standard gauge. In 1901 the Rio Grand Western came under the control of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad in Colorado. The original Denver and Rio Grande Western, after 1884, and the Rio Grande Western after 1889, were independent railroads until 1901. In the seventeen years that the two companies were independent, they succeeded in completing a network of branch lines that put them in direct competition with the Union Pacific in the state of Utah. In addition, the Rio Grande also had a virtual monopoly on the movement of coal out of the state. The Western Pacific Railway started construction in 1906 and was completed between Salt Lake City and Oakland, California, in 1909.

The company was controlled by the same people who controlled the Rio Grande, and its line was completed as a Pacific Coast extension of the Denver and Rio Grande tracks. In 1908 the Denver and Rio Grande consolidated its various branch lines and subsidiary companies in Utah and Colorado, including the Rio Grande Western, to finance the completion of the Western Pacific line. The route was completed west from Salt Lake City around the south end of the Great Salt Lake, continuing due west across the salt desert to the Nevada line at Wendover. Rio Grande lost control of the Western Pacific in 1916, with the latter railroad company remaining independent until it was merged with the Union Pacific in 1982, giving Union Pacific direct access to the ports of Oakland and San Francisco. The Southern Pacific came into the state by leasing the original line of the Central Pacific. Although most of the Southern Pacific's line in Utah is located west of the Great Salt Lake, that part of the railroad which crosses the lake is unique in the nation. In 1903 the Southern Pacific completed one of the longest railroad trestles ever built when it constructed a new line across the north arm of the Great Salt Lake.

In 1959 the trestle was replaced by an earthen fill dirt causeway. In 1988 the Southern Pacific and the Denver and Rio Grande Western merged, forming the fifth largest rail system in the nation. The growth of a network of railroads in Utah began with the completion of the Utah Central between Ogden and Salt Lake City in January 1870, and with the start of construction of the Utah Southern south from Salt Lake City in May 1871. Brigham Young viewed the completion of these railroads more as a benefit to the communities they served rather than as profit-making enterprises. These "Mormon Roads," as some historians have called them, radiated like spokes of a wheel from Salt Lake City and Ogden. They made the movement of goods and people easier within the territory, and included, in addition to the Utah Central and the Utah Southern, the Utah Western, built west from Salt Lake City, and the Utah Northern, which was built north from Brigham City and later connected with Ogden. Also among the Mormon Roads was the Summit County Railway, completed between Echo and Coalville, and extended to serve the silver mines in Park City in 1880.

At the same time that the railroad was being completed into Park City, it was also being converted from narrow gauge to standard gauge. In 1881 the line was sold under foreclosure to the Echo and Park City Railroad, a Union Pacific subsidiary. Other railroads were planned in the region to move Coalville coal to the Park City mines, as well as furnish competition to Union Pacific's monopoly in moving Wyoming coal to Salt Lake City. The first company to construct a line was the Utah Eastern Railway, completing its narrow-gauge line between Coalville and Park City in 1880. Both the Summit County and the Utah Eastern companies reached Park City on the same day over virtually parallel routes. Union Pacific soon gained control of the Utah Eastern company, however, and shut it down in December 1883. Much to Union Pacific's chagrin, another local road soon was successful in reaching Park City. This time it was the Salt Lake and Eastern Railway, completed up Parley's Canyon from Salt Lake City in 1890. Just before its track reached Park City, the company was reorganized as the Utah Central Railway.

The Rio Grande gained control of this line in 1898, realigned and rebuilt the worst parts of it, made it standard gauge, and operated the route as its Park City branch until 1946, at which time most of the line was removed. Union Pacific operated its Park City Branch, originally the Summit County Railway and later the Echo and Park City Railroad, until late 1987. The line was removed during the summer of 1989. The development of Utah's abundant mineral resources also included the building of a large network of railroad branch lines to serve the transportation needs of the mining industry. The availability of low-cost transportation did much to help Utah gain its reputation as one of the nation's treasure houses. The earliest railroad lines built to move Utah's minerals were the American Fork Railroad, completed in 1873, and the Utah Southern Railroad extension, built to serve the rich Horn Silver Mine near Milford in 1880. Other early mining railroads included two built by Charles Scofield that are sometimes called the Scofield lines.

They were the Wasatch and Jordan Valley line and the Bingham Canyon and Camp Floyd line, built to tap the silver mines in Little Cottonwood Canyon and in Bingham Canyon; both were completed in 1873. A third Scofield line, the Utah and Pleasant Valley, went south from Springville in 1879 to reach the newly discovered Winter Quarters coal mines. The large quantities of coal in eastern and central Utah were just being discovered in the early 1880s when the Denver and Rio Grande Western completed its line into Salt Lake City during 1883. The Denver and Rio Grande Western was able to improve its position in Utah by purchasing all three of the Scofield lines. The former Utah and Pleasant Valley track shortened the Denver and Rio Grande's route between eastern Utah and Utah Valley. The purchase of the other two Scofield lines gave the company some guarantee of holding the highly valued mining traffic once it reached the Salt Lake Valley. The construction of the Rio Grande line through what is now Carbon County provided transportation for the coal from the mines as they were discovered and developed. The discovery of coal mines in Price Canyon was followed by the development of other coal mines at Sunnyside.

After the turn of the century, additional coal mines were developed at Kenilworth, Hiawatha, Mohrland, and in Spring Canyon. Later railroad lines built to serve the region's coal mines included the Kenilworth and Helper Railway, the Southern Utah Railroad, the Utah Railway, and the National Coal Railway, which completed its line in 1925 to serve the newly developed coal mines located in Gordon Creek Canyon. The Carbon County Railway was completed in 1923 to furnish coal to the new steel mill at Ironton, near Springville in Utah Valley. This line was a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation and was closed in 1984 along with other U.S. Steel properties in the state. The Utah Railway remains in service today, moving huge amounts of coal from Carbon County mines to the Intermountain Power Project near Lynndyle. By 1915, in part because of the availability of low-cost transportation, coal had become a major contributor to the economic growth of the state of Utah, and remained such until the late 1940s.

The Tintic Mining District near Eureka was developed in the early 1870s, just after the coming of the transcontinental railroad. The silver, lead, and gold ore was of such high value that the first mines were successful even with the high cost of wagon transportation. The first railroad that arrived in the district, the Union Pacific-controlled Salt Lake and Western Railroad, was actually headed toward California in competition with the Central Pacific. Construction stopped in 1882 at Mammoth Mills in the Tintic Valley south of Eureka. Within a year the company completed a branch into Silver City, and in 1889 a branch was completed to serve Eureka. The line immediately began transporting ores out of the district. With the availability of low-cost rail transportation, many of the marginal mines became successful operations. By the end of 1891 the Rio Grande-controlled Tintic Range Railway had completed its line into the Tintic District from Springville and gave the Union Pacific line some needed competition. Other railroad lines built to serve the mines around Eureka were the Eureka Hill Railway, the Goshen Valley Railway, and the New East Tintic Railway.

Both the Eureka Hill and the New East Tintic roads used Shay locomotives, which are a special type of gear-driven locomotive designed for use on railroads with steep grades and sharp curves. The New East Tintic later came under Union Pacific control, and its two Shay locomotives, along with a third purchased later, were the only ones of their type on the Union Pacific lines. Other mining districts in the state attracted other railroad companies. The Deep Creek Railroad was built to serve the copper and gold mines in the Deep Creek District along Utah's western border. The Los Angles and Salt Lake Railroad built branches in Iron County to move iron ore from the mines to steel mills in Utah County as well as in California and Colorado. The St. John and Ophir Railroad was completed between the Union Pacific tracks at St. John and the silver mines in Ophir, along the western slope of the Oquirrh Mountains. Just south of Ophir was the fabulous gold-mining district of Mercur. In 1895 the Salt Lake and Mercur Railroad completed its line into Mercur from a connection with Union Pacific's former Salt Lake and Western line at Fairfield.

The track was constructed along some of the most tortuous curves and grades of any railroad track in the state. This line was among those in the state that used Shay locomotives as their sole source of locomotive power; the other railroad lines included the New East Tintic; the Eureka Hill; the Logan City Transit; the Copper Belt; the Kenilworth and Helper; the Crescent Tramway; the Newhouse, Copper Gulch and Sevier Lake; and the Salt Lake and Alta. About ten miles north of Mercur was the mining camp of Bingham Canyon. By the late 1890s the silver mines in Bingham Canyon were fading. Any further expansion would require much larger financial resources--resources that the local operators didn't have. A series of mining company consolidations, with out-of-state financial backing, took place over the next decade. These consolidations were spurred on by the increasing quantities of copper ore discovered. Copper ore was becoming a consideration because of the growing market for copper, coming mostly from the growing use of electricity in America's households and the consequent need for copper electrical wiring.

In 1903 the Utah Copper Company was organized to mine the vast quantities of low-grade copper ore discovered in Bingham Canyon. Utah Copper, along with Boston Consolidated, and later Ohio Copper Company, soon developed the methods of mining and milling that were needed to make the mining of the low-grade ore profitable. Railroad transportation played a very important part in the new mining method, which is called open-cut mining. First, steam shovels would remove the capping, or waste material, which covered the ore, and then load it into railroad cards for movement to other locations. As the ore was exposed, the shovels would load it into rail cars and these would be transported to the mills. Both Utah Copper and Boston Consolidated built mills sixteen miles north of Bingham Canyon on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake, where the availability of free-flowing springs could furnish enough water for the milling operations. Ohio Copper chose to build its mill at Lark, just outside of Bingham Canyon. At first the facilities of the Rio Grande Western's Bingham branch, along with the Copper Belt Railway, completed in 1901, were sufficient to handle the growing amounts of traffic.

To increase the capacity, in 1907 the Rio Grande Western completed a new line into the canyon, allowing for the operation of larger and heavier trains. Within a year, however, the copper companies wanted still more capacity; but the Rio Grande hesitated to build more track just to serve the mining operations. To overcome the lack of capacity, in 1911 Utah Copper completed its own line between the mine in Bingham Canyon and the mills near Magna. The new line was called the Bingham and Garfield Railway, and it soon became one of the busiest rail lines in the nation, moving some of the heaviest trains. In 1924, to reduce the costs of operations, Utah Copper installed rotary car dumpers and electric switching locomotives at the mills. Additional cost reductions came between 1925 and 1927 when the shovels and the locomotives used in the mine itself were converted from steam power to electric power. The Utah Copper Company's Bingham Canyon mine soon gained the reputation as being one of the most modern mining operations in the world. The Bingham Canyon mine became the Utah Copper Division of Kennecott Copper Corporation in 1941.

By the end of 1941, Kennecott's Bingham Canyon mine was producing a third of the nation's copper, and the Bingham and Garfield railroad was setting records by moving more than 100,000 tons of copper ore per day. The copper company continued to lower its cost by completing three railroad tunnels between the open-pit mine and the lower portions of Bingham Canyon. The first tunnel was completed in 1944, the second in 1952, and the third, and longest at 3.4 miles, was completed in 1961. In 1947 Kennecott completed an entirely new, completely electrified rail line between the mine and the mills. The new line was built using grades that were much lower than those of the original Bingham and Garfield line. The new electric line allowed production to increase, with a daily average of 110,000 tons of ore being moved over the company's own railroad. The traffic was still at this high level in 1979 the electric locomotives that were built in 1947 were replaced by new diesel locomotives.

Beginning in 1976 the electric locomotives in the mine itself also were replaced by diesels. The railroads also built a network of branch lines to serve Utah's major agricultural industries, including dairy products, wheat, sugar beets, and many kinds of fruits and vegetables. Most of the vegetables and some of the fruits were grown to support the state's canning industry, centered mostly in Weber, Davis, and other counties along the Wasatch Front. The railroads played an important part in agriculture by moving the goods to markets both within and outside of the state. Most of the dairy products were shipped to California, and the wheat was shipped either as grain or as flour to California and the southern states. The destination for the finished sugar from sugar beets was local markets and points in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Utah's canned goods were sold mostly on the Pacific Coast and in the Intermountain West and the Midwest. The agricultural branch lines which the railroads built were almost solely used for the movement of sugar beets from the fields to the sugar factories. The major sugar-beet-growing regions included the Cache Valley, the Bear River Valley, and Weber and Davis counties.

Also included were parts of Salt Lake Valley, Utah Valley, and the areas around Gunnison and Delta. The Oregon Short Line built several branch lines in these beet-growing regions. Three branches were built in the Cache Valley, four were built in the Bear River Valley, and both the Oregon Short Line and the Denver and Rio Grande completed branches into the area west of Roy and Clearfield, as well as building short spurs in the West Jordan, Spanish Fork, and Gunnison areas. The Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad built two branches to serve the region around Delta. Beet-loading stations were also built at many points along the railroads' other branch lines and some of the main lines themselves. In the period between 1895 and 1940, before the widespread use of trucks, railroads were the most efficient way to transport sugar beets to the factories, located in the Cache Valley, the Bear River Valley, Brigham City, Ogden, Layton, West Jordan, Spanish Fork, Gunnison, and Delta. The canning industry in the state placed Utah as the eighth-ranked producer of canned goods in the nation.

Of the more than seventy-five canning companies that have been in business in the state, less than fifteen were truly successful and able to remain in business year round. Each of these successful canning factories was serviced by a direct railroad connection, allowing direct shipment of their canned goods to waiting markets. The largest canneries were located in West Ogden and in Smithfield, which remains today as the only cannery operating in the state. Successful smaller canneries were located in Tremonton, Perry, North Ogden, Roy, Hooper, Clearfield, Syracuse, Morgan, Murray, and Spanish Fork. In 1914, to support Utah's growing canning industry, the American Can Company built one of the West's largest can-manufacturing facilities in Ogden. Between 1915 and 1979, when the plant was closed, the company shipped many railroad boxcars filled with new, empty cans to canneries all over the state and the region. The railroads also had an important role in Utah's canned milk industry, which produced both evaporated and condensed milk.

In 1904 Utah's, and especially Cache Valley's, dairy industry received a major boost when Sego Milk Products Company opened a condensing plant in Richmond, north of Logan. In 1925 Sego built a processing plant in Hyrum. The Borden Company opened its milk-condensing plant in Logan in 1916. The Morning Milk Company opened a condensing plant in Wellsville in 1923, and sold it to the Carnation Company in 1946. The Sego plant in Richmond was served by the Oregon Short Line, as was the Morning Milk plant in Wellsville. The Sego plant in Hyrum was served by a spur of the Utah-Idaho Central electric line. Borden's Logan plant was served by both the Utah-Idaho Central and the Oregon Short Line. The opening of these plants has been called the single greatest stimulus to the dairy industry in northern Utah. In 1933 milk was collected from nearly three thousand dairy farms and delivered daily to the condensing plants, mostly using the trains of the Utah-Idaho Central interurban railroad and those of the Oregon Short Line's Cache Valley Branch.

Between 1926 and 1930 the dairy industry was the third largest farm-based industry in the state, and half of the dairy production came from the annual production of sixty million cans of condensed and evaporated milk. The story of Utah's railroads includes the completion of electric railroads, including the electric interurban lines and the electric streetcar lines, for the movement of passengers. Between 1890 and 1920 Utah's population more than doubled, from 210,779 to 449,396. Most of that growth was in the urban areas and nearby farming communities along the Wasatch Front. By the turn of the century, the steam railroads were straining to provide the local populace with transportation to local destinations. To fill this need for additional local passenger transportation, several local electric interurban railroads were organized between 1900 and 1910. This group of companies developed into what became one of the largest electric railroad systems in the nation. Between 1910 and 1920 four separate railroads completed either the electrification of their lines or the actual construction of their lines as electric railroads.

The Salt Lake and Utah Railroad was begun in 1914 as an electric line south from Salt Lake City to Provo, and was completed to Payson in 1916. The Salt Lake, Garfield and Western began in 1891 as the Saltair Beach Railway, running from Salt Lake City west to the new Saltair Resort. Construction began in 1892, at which time the name of the line was changed to the Salt Lake and Los Angeles Railway to show that the company had larger plans. In 1916 the company was reorganized as the Salt Lake, Garfield and Western Railway and made the announcement that the line would be electrified, a process completed in 1919. The Utah Idaho Central railroad began as the Ogden, Logan and Idaho Railroad. The earlier road had taken over the streetcar lines of both the Ogden Rapid Transit and the Logan Rapid Transit and completed a connection between the two by way of Brigham City in 1915. The Logan Rapid Transit had completed their line north to Preston, Idaho, in 1912.

Preston remained as the northern end of a network of electric interurban railroads that spread along the Wasatch Front from Cache Valley south to Payson, at the southern end of Utah Valley. In 1910 the Salt Lake and Ogden Railroad electrified its line between those two cities. The railroad was built by Simon Bamberger and had been completed to Ogden in 1905. In 1917 the company became the Bamberger Electric Railroad. Simon Bamberger was elected governor in 1917, as the Progressive candidate. And ironically it was the improved road and highway system that he promoted while he was in office which led to the eventual demise of the interurban railroad system in Utah. As people were better able to get around in their own cars, they were less inclined to take the electric-powered trains into and between Utah's major cities. The improved road system also allowed trucking companies to become more competitive, and they gradually took the lucrative package express business away from the interurban lines. The interurban railroad companies were able to gain back some of the lost traffic by offering their own trucking services between the cities that they also served with electrified railroad service.

Two of Utah's interurban companies--the Utah Idaho Central in the north and the Salt Lake and Utah in the south--were able to hold on only until the late 1940s. The Bamberger ceased passenger train service in 1952, using diesel locomotives to remain in the freight business until 1958. Utah's last interurban line, the Salt Lake, Garfield and Western, is still in business today, having converted to using diesel locomotives in 1951. The line stopped running passenger trains during the early 1960s, however. The Emigration Canyon Railroad was built in 1907 to move sandstone from quarries located in Emigration Canyon down to Salt Lake City for use as building stone. Unfortunately, the company's timing coincided with the availability of cement within the state. Since concrete is a much better building material, the market for building stone (the railroad's traffic base) virtually disappeared within a three-year period between 1909 and 1912. Streetcar lines were built in Salt Lake City, Provo, Ogden, and Logan.

The line in Provo consisted of only a single line and was abandoned after being in operation for only six years--from 1913 to 1919. There were six lines in Ogden, with a total length of about twenty-four miles. In Logan there were three lines, totaling just over eight miles, with the longest being from the Oregon Short Line depot to the Utah State Agricultural College. After the 1915 merger of the Ogden and Logan lines, the new Ogden, Logan and Idaho Company continued streetcar service until the respective cities began paving their streets. At that time many of its lines were removed because the company couldn't pay its share of the paving costs. The Ogden lines were sold to a separate company in 1920, and by the mid-1930s the streetcars in Ogden had been replaced by buses. The streetcar lines in Salt Lake City were by far the most extensive in the state, beginning with those of the Salt Lake City Railroad in 1872 and the Salt Lake Rapid Transit Company in 1890. These two companies built a large network of streetcar lines throughout the city and outlying area.

Other companies also were organized in the 1890s and built lines into other parts of the city. All of the lines were merged in 1901 as the Utah Light and Railway Company and again in 1914 as the Utah Light and Traction Company. The streetcar system in Salt Lake City reached its peak in 1918 with over 146 miles of tracks, including a line south of Holladay and another line north to Centerville. Beginning in the late 1920s buses began to replace the streetcars, and slowly over the next twenty years the individual lines were abandoned. The last streetcar ran in Salt Lake City in 1946. The part that the railroads have played in the economic development of both the territory and the state of Utah was a major one. There can be no doubt that without the railroads our state would not be what it is today. The completion of the transcontinental rail line through Utah Territory in May 1869 was the beginning of a much larger story of railroads in Utah that has largely gone untold.

The availability of low-cost transportation has as much to do with Utah's economic success as the state's ability to produce the goods being shipped. A good example of the importance of transportation is the delay in economic development within the Uinta Basin until a network of federally funded highways was completed in the 1930s, connecting the area with the rest of the surrounding region. The region still does not enjoy railroad service to the surrounding areas, although railroads were planned through the Uinta Basin as early as the 1870s. Of course, with the development of a complete network of modern paved roads and highways throughout the state, along with modern facilities for airline shipment, the role that the railroads play today in the everyday business of the state has been much reduced. Yet the railroads still have a vital role in moving goods and people around and through the state. The amount of rail traffic that moves into, out of, and through Utah is today setting record levels every year. This trend likely will continue, because railroads are still an irreplaceable element in a dynamic chain of the transportation of our nation's goods and services.

Union Pacific Depot, Salt Lake City Denver & Rio Grande Depot, Photos: The Transcontinental Railroad's Golden Spike - CNET CNET Photos: The Transcontinental Railroad's Golden Spike Jupiter Driving through open country on a gorgeous Utah day on the north side of the Great Salt Lake as part of his Road Trip 2009 , CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman discovered the Golden Spike National Historic Site . There, on May 10, 1869, the final tie was laid and the final spike--the "golden" spike--was driven in to create the Transcontinental Railroad. It was the meeting of the Central Pacific Railroad out of Sacramento, Calif., and the Union Pacific Railroad out of Omaha, Neb. With that final spike, the railroad was completed, and for the first time, it was possible for a single train to cross (most of) the country. "Two locomotives--Central Pacific's Jupiter and Union Pacific's No. 119--pulled up to the one rail gap left in the track," reads a National Park Service brochure. "After a golden spike was symbolically tapped, a final iron spike was driven to connect the railroads." Click here for the entire Road Trip 2009 package.

Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Union Pacific Union Pacific train No. 119, which met the Central Pacific's Jupiter at Promontory Summit, as Congress decreed the site be called. No. 119 had crossed 1,086 miles to get to the first-ever meeting point of the two railroads. Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Jupiter head-on A head-on look at the Central Pacific Railroad's Jupiter, the first train from that railroad to meet up with track from the Union Pacific, a joining that formed the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Summit in Utah. Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Different ties According to a National Park Service ranger at the Golden Spike site, the workers from the Central Pacific used a superior quality tie to that of their counterparts with the Union Pacific. Here, you can see the meeting of the two railroads and the different kinds of ties used. The theory is that the ties from the West were superior due to the prevalence there of saw mills and abundant lumber. The plaque A plaque certifying the completion of the railroad. Among the signatories was Leland Stanford, the then governor of California, and the man who founded Stanford University.

Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET The Golden Spike A replica of the Golden Spike is on display at the site's visitor center. The original is at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET At the controls Some of the controls of the Union Pacific's No. 119 train, which met nose-to-nose with the Central Pacific's Jupiter at the dedication of the Transcontinental Railroad 140 years ago. Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Here comes No. 199 At the Golden Spike National Historic Site, daily re-enactments are held of the meeting of the two trains at the final joining of the Transcontinental Railroad. Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Head-to-head The two trains, the Central Pacific's Jupiter (left) and the Union Pacific's No. 119, are nose-to-nose at Promontory Summit, the site of the final meeting place of the Transcontinental Railroad. Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Ten miles of track During the final weeks of the project to complete the Transcontinental Railroad, the crews working on each side competed to see who could lay the most track in a single day.

"In early April (1869), the Union Pacific laid 8.5 miles of track in one day," reads a National Park Service brochure. "The (Union Pacific) then bet the Central Pacific $10,000 that they could not better the record. On April 28, 1869, the CP won the bet!" Completing the Transcontinental Railroad, 1869 Completing the Transcontinental Railroad, 1869 Printer Friendly Version >>> A railroad linking America's east and west coasts had been a dream almost since the steam locomotive made its first appearance in the early 1830s. The need for such a link was dramatized by the discovery of gold in California in 1848 that brought thousands to the West Coast. At that time only two routes to the West were available: by wagon across the plains or by ship around South America. Traveling either of these could take four months or more to complete. Although everyone thought a transcontinental railroad was a good idea, deep disagreement arose over its path. The Northern states Union Pacific workers laying rails October 1866 favored a northern route while the Southern states pushed for a southern route.

This log jam was broken in 1861 with the secession of the Southern states from the Union that allowed Congress to select a route running through Nebraska to California. Construction of the railroad presented a daunting task requiring the laying of over 2000 miles of track that stretched through some the most forbidding landscape on the continent. Tunnels would have to be blasted out of the mountains, rivers bridged and wilderness tamed. Two railroad companies took up the challenge. The Union Pacific began laying track from Omaha to the west while the Central Pacific headed east from Sacramento. Progress was slow initially, but the pace quickened with the end of the Civil War. Finally the two sets of railroad tracks were joined and the continent united with elaborate ceremony at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869. The impact was immediate and dramatic. Travel time between America's east and west coasts was reduced from months to less than a week.

ADVERTISMENT "It was a very hilarious occasion; everybody had all they wanted to drink..." The ceremony at Promontory culminated with Governor Stanford of California (representing the Central Pacific Railroad) and Thomas Durant (president of the Union Pacific Railroad) taking turns pounding a Golden Spike into the final tie that united the railroad's east and west sections. As the spike was struck, telegraph signals simultaneously alerted San Francisco and New York City, igniting a celebratory cacophony of tolling bells and cannon fire in each city. Alexander Toponce witnessed the event: "I saw the Golden Spike driven at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. I had a beef contract to furnish meat to the construction camps of Benson and West... On the last day, only about 100 feet were laid, and everybody tried to have a hand in the work. I took a shovel from an Irishman, and threw a shovel full of dirt on the ties just to tell about it afterward. A special train from the west brought Sidney Dillon, General Dodge, T. C. Durant, John R. Duff, S. A.

Seymour, a lot of newspaper men, and plenty of the best brands of champagne. Another train made up at Ogden carried the band from Fort Douglas, the leading men of Utah Territory, and a small but efficient supply of Valley Tan. It was a very hilarious occasion; everybody had all they wanted to drink all the time. Some of the participants got "sloppy," and these were not all Irish and Chinese by any means. California furnished the Golden Spike. Governor Tuttle of Nevada furnished one of silver. General Stanford [Governor Safford?] presented one of gold, silver, and iron from Arizona. The last tie was of California laurel. When they came to drive the last spike, Governor Stanford, president of the Central Pacific, took the sledge, and the first time he struck he missed the spike and hit the rail. Promontory, Utah May 10, 1869 What a howl went up! Irish, Chinese, Mexicans, and everybody yelled with delight. 'He missed it. Yee.' The engineers blew the whistles and rang their bells.

Then Stanford tried it again and tapped the spike and the telegraph operators had fixed their instruments so that the tap was reported in all the offices east and west, and set bells to tapping in hundreds of towns and cities... Then Vice President T. C. Durant of the Union Pacific took up the sledge and he missed the spike the first time. Then everybody slapped everybody else again and yelled, 'He missed it too, yow!' It was a great occasion, everyone carried off souvenirs and there are enough splinters of the last tie in museums to make a good bonfire. When the connection was finally made the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific engineers ran their engines up until their pilots touched. Then the engineers shook hands and had their pictures taken and each broke a bottle of champagne on the pilot of the other's engine and had their picture taken again. The Union Pacific engine, the, 'Jupiter,' was driven by my good friend, George Lashus, who still lives in Ogden. Both before and after the spike driving ceremony there were speeches, which were cheered heartily.

I do not remember what any of the speakers said now, but I do remember that there was a great abundance of champagne." References: Alexander Topence's account first appeared in Topence, Alexander, Alexander Topence, Pioneer (1923) republished in Botkin, B.A. and Alvin Harlow (eds.) A Treasury of Railroad Folklore (1953); Bain, David Harward, Empire Express, Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (1999). How To Cite This Article: "Completing the Transcontinental Railroad, 1869" EyeWitness to History, (2004). When the railroad opened, a First Class ticket from Omaha to Sacramento cost $111, a Second Class ticket $80 and Third Class $40. (Equivalent to approximately $1489, $1073, and $536 respectively in today's money.) In June 1876 the Transcontinental Express set a record of 83 hours and 39 minutes to make the trip from New York City to San Francisco.

Transcontinental railroad completed - May 10, 1869 - HISTORY.com Transcontinental railroad completed Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1869, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train, and the West would surely lose some of its wild charm with the new connection to the civilized East. Since at least 1832, both Eastern and frontier statesmen realized a need to connect the two coasts. It was not until 1853, though, that Congress appropriated funds to survey several routes for the transcontinental railroad. The actual building of the railroad would have to wait even longer, as North-South tensions prevented Congress from reaching an agreement on where the line would begin.

One year into the Civil War, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act (1862), guaranteeing public land grants and loans to the two railroads it chose to build the transcontinental line, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. With these in hand, the railroads began work in 1866 from Omaha and Sacramento, forging a northern route across the country. In their eagerness for land, the two lines built right past each other, and the final meeting place had to be renegotiated. Harsh winters, staggering summer heat, Indian raids and the lawless, rough-and-tumble conditions of newly settled western towns made conditions for the Union Pacific laborers–mainly Civil War veterans of Irish descent–miserable. The overwhelmingly immigrant Chinese work force of the Central Pacific also had its fair share of problems, including brutal 12-hour work days laying tracks over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. On more than one occasion, whole crews would be lost to avalanches, or mishaps with explosives would leave several dead.

For all the adversity they suffered, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific workers were able to finish the railroad–laying nearly 2,000 miles of track–by 1869, ahead of schedule and under budget. Journeys that had taken months by wagon train or weeks by boat now took only days. Their work had an immediate impact: The years following the construction of the railway were years of rapid growth and expansion for the United States, due in large part to the speed and ease of travel that the railroad provided. Related Videos Transcontinental, Railroad, Golden Spike, Promontory Summit, Railway Act Transcontinental, Railroad, Golden Spike, Promontory Summit, Railway Act Transcontinental Railroad As early as 1832 the nation had realized a need to tie California to the rest of the states through the means of a transcontinental railroad system. In 1849 and 1850, Howard Stansbury surveyed a route for a transcontinental railroad through the Black Hills and south of Salt Lake City In March of 1853, Congress approved measures for the war department to survey various transcontinental railroad routes.

As early as 1858, the visionary George Pullman began building sleeping cars that would one day be used on the transcontinental railroad Finally in 1862 after years of hostile debate, Congress gave its blessing with the passage of the Pacific Railway Act which authorized the building of the transcontinental railroad with the Union Pacific Railroad building west from Omaha, Nebraska and the Central Pacific Railroad building east from Sacramento, California Pacific Railway Act ensured the transcontinental railroad 's loans of either $16,000 on the plains, $32,000 in the Great Basin and $48,000 through the mountainous terrain for each mile of track laid. In addition the Pacific Railway Act gave the Transcontinental Railroad 's alternate sections of public land on each side of the track for each mile of tracks built In 1864 the Pacific Railway Act was changed to 20 alternate sections. In the end the Transcontinental Railroad Companies acquired 33 million free acres of land The Transcontinental Railroad 's got off to a slow start due to the Civil War and lack of investors but from year 1866 the race was on.

The Transcontinental Railroad 's Overcome granite, bad winters, heat of the desert, lack of supplies and Indians, the Transcontinental Railroad 's plowed forward The Transcontinental Railroad 's for two hundred miles in Utah Territory overlapped their surveying and grading crews with blasting crews to close for comfort. The Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad lost many China men to accidents Finally the government in January of 1869 sent a commission of civil engineers to decide where the two Transcontinental Railroad 's should meet. The final decision was for Promontory Summit Promontory Summit is 56 miles west of Ogden Utah territory. May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit in Utah territory, the first of five transcontinental railroad 's were completed The golden spike was driven in the last tie plat to commemorate the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad at Promontory Summit as the completed first Transcontinental Railroad as directed by the Pacific Railway Act The striking of the golden spike at Promontory Summit symbolized the nation was now joined with 3500 miles of Transcontinental Railroad.

In all a Railroad from New York to California The Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad contributed 2000 miles which had been laid from Omaha to Sacramento Transcontinental Railroad passenger train service began five days later from Omaha with the trip costing $111 plush, first class and scheduled to take 4 days, 4 hours and 40 minutes, second class was $80 with a few lesser defined amenities and the raw immigrant class of $40 with no amenities. Transcontinental Railroad trips were lengthened due to washouts, buffaloes, train robberies and Indians On June 4, 1876 in celebration of the nation's centennial, a train called the Transcontinental Express from New York arrived in San Francisco with a record breaking time of 83 hours and 39 minutes Transcontinental Railroad travel times that fast would not be heard of again until 50 years later when trains started running on a daily basis holding that speed On March 8, 1881 the second transcontinental railroad was completed linking the Southern Pacific Railroad with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad at Deming in New Mexico Territory Five Transcontinental Railroad 's were once a dream.

The completion of the Great Northern Railway in January 6, 1893, made completion of five sprawling transcontinental railroad 's basically following the original surveys commissioned in 1853 by the government Our countries Railway Act 's made it possible for Five Transcontinental Railroad 's drive the Golden Spike of completion tying this young country together so it could grow in to the expectations of Our Founding Fathers Emigration Canyon Railroad Served SLC Builders' Needs Emigration Canyon RailRoad Served SLC Builders' Needs Deborah Blake Utah History Encyclopedia On 10 May 1869 from Promontory Summit northwest of Ogden, Utah, a single telegraphed word, "done," signaled to the nation the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Railroad crews of the Union Pacific, 8,000 to 10,000 Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, had pushed west from Omaha, Nebraska. At Promontory they met crews of the Central Pacific, which had included over 10,000 Chinese laborers, who had built the line east from Sacramento, California. Promontory Summit Actually, the construction crews built several miles of track parallel to each other.

The federal legislation chartering the transcontinental project had not provided that the tracks join. There was nothing to prevent each line from continuing to build and thus increase the subsidies it might receive from the federal government. Therefore, Congress acted to set the meeting point at Promontory. The ceremony that day to mark the completion of the last set of ties and spikes was somewhat disorganized. The crowd pressed so close to the engines that reporters could not see or hear much of what was actually said, which accounts for many discrepancies in the various accounts. Union Pacific's No. 119 and Central Pacific's "Jupiter" engines lined up facing each other on the tracks, separated only by the width of one rail. Leland Stanford, one of the "Big Four" of the Central Pacific, had brought four ceremonial spikes. The famed "Golden Spike" was presented by David Hewes, a San Francisco construction magnate. It was engraved with the names of the Central Pacific directors, special sentiments appropriate to the occasion, and, on the head, the notation "the Last Spike." A second golden spike was presented by the San Francisco News Letter. A silver spike was Nevada's contribution, and a spike blended of iron, silver, and gold represented Arizona.

These spikes were dropped into a pre-bored laurelwood tie during the ceremony. No spike represented Utah, and Mormon Church leaders were conspicuous by their absence. Railroad poster At 12:47 P.M. the actual last spike--an ordinary iron spike--was driven into a regular tie. Both spike and sledge were wired to send the sound of the strikes over the wire to the nation. However, Stanford and Thomas Durant from the Union Pacific both missed the spike. Still, telegraph operator Shilling clicked three dots over the wire: "done." Meanwhile, with an unwired sledge, construction supervisors James H. Strobridge and Samuel R. Reed took turns driving the last spike. For several weeks Promontory continued to be a town of tents and crude shacks. The land speculators, petty merchants, saloon keepers, gamblers, and prostitutes who had followed these tent cities stayed only as long as there were workers to entice. But, unlike many of these "hell on wheels" camps, Promontory never became the site of a permanent city. In 1901 the Central Pacific steam engine "Jupiter" was scrapped for iron. The Union Pacific's No.

119 was scrapped two years later. The 1903-04 construction of the Lucin Cutoff siphoned most of the traffic from Promontory's "Old Line." The last tie of laurel was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. One of the supporting ties had been used as a roof beam in a barn that Edgar Stone, the fireman on the Jupiter, had built in North Ogden. Only the "Last Spike" remained--ensconced at Stanford University. In 1942 the old rails over the 123-mile Promontory Summit line were salvaged for war efforts in ceremonies marking the "Undriving of the Golden Spike." Artifact hunters picked over the area for ties and materials. The event of the completing of the transcontinental railroad, which some historians had compared in significance to the Declaration of Independence, seemed to fade from public consciousness. However, a memorial marker of the "Last Spike" had been placed along the right-of-way in 1943, and in the years after World War II local residents began marking the event.

In the 1948 reenactment of the driving of the last spike, miniature locomotives were furnished by the Southern Pacific. In 1951 a monument to the event was dedicated and placed in front of the Union Station in Ogden. In 1957 Congress established a seven-acre tract as the Golden Spike National Historic Site. Bernice Gibbs Anderson of Corinne organized the National Golden Spike Society in 1959 to promote the site. In 1965 Congress enlarged the site to encompass 2,176 acres and be administered by the National Park Service. That same year Weber County extended the highway from 12th Street to Promontory, which made access to the site easier. The enthusiasm to mark the centennial of the transcontinental railroad grew during the next few years. Searches were made for old engines, a commission to plan the reenactment was organized, the Golden Spike Monument was moved 150 feet to the northwest, and the National Park Service began the reconstruction of the two railroad grades, the lines of track, and two telegraph lines, as well as switches and siding connections.

The engines used in the 1969 ceremonies were modified to resemble the originals. From 1970 to 1980 the annual reenactment used two vintage locomotives on loan from Nevada. But, in 1980, with water from Liberty Island in New York Harbor and Fort Point in San Francisco Bay, two replica steamers constructed by Chadwell O'Connor Engineering Laboratories of Costa Mesa, California, were dedicated. Built with $1.5 million in federal funds, these were the first steam engines constructed in the United States in twenty-five years. They now run daily from May to August and from Christmas to New Year's Day. Park Service personnel at the Golden Spike Information Center, also dedicated in 1980, can direct visitors to walking and driving tours along the old grades, as well as to photo and other exhibits celebrating the transcontinental railroad. See: Utah Historical Quarterly (Winter 1969)

Question: What railroad was completed by a golden spike in Utah?
Answer: Transcontinental Railroad