Promontory Summit, 1869: How the Transcontinental Railroad Met

On May 10, 1869, two railroads met on a high pass in Utah Territory, and the United States had its first transcontinental railroad. You've probably seen the famous photo of two locomotives nose to nose. The story behind that day is full of near-misses, wrong turns and a hammer swing that didn't land.

The setup: a race paid by the mile

The project started on paper with the Pacific Railway Act, passed on July 1, 1862. According to the National Archives, it provided federal subsidies in land and loans to build a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific. Two companies did the building: the Union Pacific worked west from Omaha, Nebraska, and the Central Pacific worked east from Sacramento, California.

The National Archives says the Union Pacific employed more than 8,000 Irish, German and Italian immigrants, while the Central Pacific's workforce included more than 10,000 Chinese laborers. Both faced brutal terrain and weather, and the line cut across the ancestral lands of American Indian nations, which brought conflict.

Because government land grants and subsidy bonds were awarded by the amount of railroad built, the two companies had every reason to keep going. The National Park Service says their grading crews actually passed each other for about 250 miles between Echo, Utah, and Wells, Nevada, each hoping to claim more incentives. They didn't lay parallel track, but unfinished parallel roadbeds still survive in places. Congress finally pressured the companies to agree on a meeting place, and they chose Promontory Summit.

Not Promontory Point

Quick myth-buster: it didn't happen at Promontory Point. The park says Promontory Point is 35 miles south. Some reporters and railroad officials in 1869 wrote "Promontory Point" for unknown reasons, and the mistake has been repeated in textbooks and films ever since. The right name is Promontory Summit, the highest point of the pass through the Promontory Mountains.

The workers who made it possible

Stanford University's Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project lays out how central Chinese workers were to the western half. The Central Pacific hired a crew of 21 Chinese workers in January 1864. By July 1865 the Chinese workforce was nearly 4,000. In February 1867, about 8,000 Chinese were working on tunnels and 3,000 were laying track, roughly ninety percent of the workforce. Historians estimate that as many as 10,000 to 15,000 were at work at any one time.

The project also tells the story of April 28, 1869, when Central Pacific crews laid ten miles and fifty-six feet of track in one day. It came from a $10,000 wager Charles Crocker made with Thomas Durant of the Union Pacific. Eight Irish rail-handlers and roughly 5,000 workers, mostly Chinese, worked from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., placing 3,520 rails that averaged 560 pounds each. The railroad recorded the names of the eight Irish workers. None of the Chinese workers' names were recorded.

Getting to the party was a disaster

The ceremony was supposed to happen on May 8. Neither railroad boss had an easy trip.

The Central Pacific's Leland Stanford set out behind the locomotive Antelope. A train of sightseers ran just ahead of him through a mountain cut that workers were still clearing. Those workers missed the small green flag signaling another train close behind, and rolled a huge log down the cut. Stanford's train hit it. Antelope wasn't derailed but was badly damaged, so Stanford's cars were coupled to the engine of the train ahead: Jupiter. That's how Jupiter ended up in history.

The Union Pacific's Thomas Durant had it worse. At Piedmont, Wyoming, his train was forced onto a siding by more than 400 laid-off tie cutters who had been waiting three months to be paid. They chained his coach to the siding, and the standoff lasted nearly two days until the money arrived. The delay pushed the ceremony to May 10.

Then the rain-swollen Weber River damaged supports on the Devil's Gate Bridge. Durant's engineer refused to take the heavy locomotive across, so he pushed each coach over and let the nervous dignitaries coast to the other side, leaving them without an engine. A call went out to Ogden, where Union Pacific No. 119 happened to be sitting next to the main line. No. 119 came to the rescue and earned its place in the photos.

Four special spikes (and a fancy tie)

The park's account of the ceremony objects is a treat:

• The Golden Spike: San Francisco contractor David Hewes used $400 of his own gold to have it cast. It was 5 5/8 inches long, weighed 14.03 ounces and was made of 17.6-carat gold. One side says the railroad was completed "May 8th 1869," because that was the plan. The top reads "The Last Spike."
• A second gold spike, ordered by the San Francisco News Letter, whose whereabouts are unknown.
• Nevada's silver spike, forged from 25 ounces of silver and rushed to Reno just in time to catch Stanford's train.
• Arizona's spike: an ordinary iron spike with a gold-plated head and silver-plated shaft.

There was also a silver-plated maul and a polished laurelwood tie made by a San Francisco billiard table manufacturer. The tie was later destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

The ceremony itself

Workers set the laurel tie in place and laid the last rails across it. Sacramento banker Edgar Mills ran the show, and Rev. Dr. John Todd gave an invocation. After the presentations and Stanford's speech, Durant was supposed to talk, but he had a severe headache; the park's own account says it was most likely a hangover from the previous night's party in Ogden. Union Pacific chief engineer Grenville Dodge spoke instead.

Stanford and Durant gently tapped the precious-metal spikes with the silver maul so as not to mark them. Then the fancy tie and spikes were swapped for a pine tie and ordinary iron spikes. A final iron spike and an iron hammer were wired to the telegraph line so the nation could "hear" the blows.

Stanford swung and hit the tie. Durant swung and missed the tie entirely. A regular rail worker drove the last spike home, and Western Union telegrapher W.N. Shilling sent the message: "D-O-N-E." It was 12:47 p.m. on Monday, May 10, 1869.

How many people saw it? Nobody knows exactly. The park's FAQ says estimates range from 300 to 1,500, and another park page puts it at about 1,000. The crowd included officials, railroad workers (among them a Chinese contingent from the Central Pacific), five companies of soldiers from the 21st U.S. Infantry, and a small number of women and children.

The champagne photo

After the spike, Jupiter and No. 119 were run up until they nearly touched. Engineers George Booth and Sam Bradford each broke a bottle of champagne on the other's locomotive, and chief engineers Samuel Montague and Grenville Dodge shook hands. Andrew J. Russell captured the moment in "East and West Shaking Hands at Laying of Last Rail," better known as the Champagne Photo. It was made on a wet glass plate with no shutter: the photographer pulled the lens cap and replaced it when he guessed the time was right.

What happened next

• Travel changed fast. The National Archives says the railroad cut a journey of several months to about a week.
• Promontory was the junction town from May to December 1869, a wild place by the park's description, until the junction moved to Ogden. The Lucin Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake bypassed the route in 1903, and the rails were pulled up in 1942 for the World War II effort.
• The real Golden Spike went home with Hewes, who donated it to Stanford University in 1892. It's in the Cantor Arts Center collection.
• The original locomotives were scrapped in the early 1900s. The ones you can see at Golden Spike National Historical Park are working replicas built by O'Connor Engineering, within a quarter inch of the originals, and put into service on May 10, 1979. True to 1869, Jupiter burns wood and No. 119 burns coal.