Golden Spike, cont.

The railroad route, Central Pacific in blue, Union Pacific in red.

Our visit to the Golden Spike Historic Site was greatly enhanced by our viewing of Hell on Wheels, a TV series that ran 6 seasons.  The main character, Anson Mount, pictured below, was fictional.  Colm Meany played Thomas Durant, a real person - also a robber baron and a nasty, despicable, sumbitch with the morals and ethics of a goat.  Baaaad goat.  The series can be streamed via Netflix.  Here's an overview: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1699748/




Hell on Wheels was the name given to the tent towns that sprang up every place the Union Pacific builders set up camp.  It was a rowdy, bawdy bunch: gamblers, whores, purveyors of rotgut booze and so on.



There's a whole trainload of mind boggling facts about the building of the TCRR.  One that really impressed me was the 1750' tunnel in the Sierra Nevada mountains built through solid granite at the rate of one foot per day.  The per-day rate increased to a whopping 1.8' per day when they started using nitroglycerin.

I suppose any civil engineer worth his/her salt knows how to build a tunnel, have that tunnel take the shortest route possible, and finally, come out at exactly the right spot.  I'm not a civil engineer, have no idea how it's done.  Seems a miracle.

Golden Spike Historical Site

Promontory, UT is where the last spike was hammered in the trans-continental railroad - not Promontory Point which is several miles to the south.  The Point was mistakenly named as the last spike location by period newspapers and the misconception continues to this day.

A visit here had been on Trish's bucket list for some time so she's a happy camper. 

The eastern portion of the RR, the Union Pacific, started in Omaha; the western leg, the Central Pacific, started in Sacramento.  The construction of both legs was challenging due to severe weather, mountains, deserts; the eastern part had hostile Indians in addition. 

The Historic Site is a 'gotta wanna' kind of place in a remote location about 40 miles from the nearest freeway.  After touring it, gotta say it's well worth the drive.

Exact replicas of the 2 engines that met at the Spike were built in 1979.  Below, they meet as their ancestors did back in the day, with the last spike location centered between them.

The Jupiter, a wood burning steam engine, came from the west.

The 119, a coal burning steamer, came from the east.

The Golden Spike was hammered in on May 10, 1869.  It now resides at Stanford U in CA.

To be continued.