The Golden Spike

Promontory Summit, Utah, where the US transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. The National Park Service runs the Golden Spike National Historic Site here, complete with a museum and operational replicas of the original locomotives (seen here). The Central Pacific built eastward from Sacramento, California, while the Union Pacific went west from Council Bluffs, Iowa. A symbolic "golden spike" was used to link the rails in a ceremony on May 10, 1869. We're standing by the Central Pacific's Jupiter here looking toward the Union Pacific's 119 (the UP just prosaically used numbers, not names). The wide funnel on the Jupiter shows it was a wood burner; as the Central Pacific was built largely thru wilderness, fuelwood was abundant. #119, OTOH, was a coal burner as shown by its straight stack.

The replicas are identical to the originals in all details except for a handful of safety-related modifications. In particular, the locomotives really were this colorful! I tended to think of 19th century rolling stock as dull and gray, from all those old B&W prints, but in fact they were downright gaudy. The left inset shows the Jupiter, seen from the side; the right inset shows #119.

Ironically, the railroad itself is abandoned here; it was bypassed in 1904 by the Lucin Cutoff directly across the Great Salt Lake. The rails were ripped up in 1942 for the war effort, but a mile and a half was relaid for the park in 1969.

The old railroad grade continues westward as the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Transcontinental Back Country Byway (4WD recommended, but you'd probably be OK with high clearance.) It is surreal to drive along the old track alignment and see all the remnants from when it was an active rail line. It's remote and utterly deserted now. Being that it's an old railroad grade, it's also good for mountain biking. Here's the BLM writeup: www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/salt_lake/recreation/back_country...