The Wedding of the Rails

We know what you're thinking. Yes, there is a wedding in San Francisco on our travel itinerary, but how psyched was Judy to visit the location of THIS historic wedding along the way!

Warning: HISTORY DETOUR! For those interested, here's how travel across America went from a dangerous months-long odyssey on horseback costing $1000 to a mere week-long expedition at just $150, with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869. In all, this stretch of track measured 1,776 miles and covered a territory wider than all of Europe.

Let's time travel back to the Civil War. The genius of President Abraham Lincoln was in his simple ability to walk and chew gum -- to serve as Commander-in-chief of a brutal homeland war while holding fast to his vision for, well, American Progress (you'll see this at the end of the post).

In 1862 alone, he passed 3 bold pieces of legislation designed to achieve that vision: the Homestead Act, to encourage white settlers to move west; the Morrill Land-Grant Act, creating universities across that newly-settled land (click here), like Univ of Wisc (Go Badgers, Bec!); and the Pacific Railroad Act, to build a transcontinental railroad, with a stipulation that telegraph lines also be constructed along each mile to ensure in every way possible that the splintered nation stay connected from east to west. And where exactly did the Union Pacific RR (red line) meet the Central Pacific RR (blue line)?? Why, at Promontory Point, Utah!

The celebration linking the two rail lines took place with a 17k gold railroad spike being driven in where the rail lines met. Dirty rotten scoundrel robber barons Thomas Durant (Union Pacific) and Leland Stanford (Central Pacific), who helped fund the projects while swindling the US government out of millions, tried to hammer in the gold spike but kept missing (Durant purportedly had a wicked hangover and Stanford was just clumsy). After several embarrassing attempts, the spike was driven in by nearby workers. And with the newly-minted telegraph lines connecting east to west, the entire nation listened closely and went wild with celebration upon the fait accompli. The photo below shows the two financiers in front shaking hands. FUN FACT: Leland Stanford and his wife Jane would later use their spoils to found what is now a quite famous university in memory of their departed son, Leland, Jr.; the legal name of that university, to this day, is "Leland Stanford Junior University."

Today, to reach the point where the spike connected the two lines, you drive over this trestle.

Here's the NPS Ranger giving a socially-distanced explanation of how the railroad ties from each side are, in fact, shaped differently. The light-colored tie in the middle is the location where the golden spike was hammered in.

Here it is...

The park also commemorates the tens of thousands of immigrants who labored for each company under excruciating conditions. The Irish from out east worked for the Union Pacific...

And the Chinese from the west coast labored for the Central Pacific. They were of particular value for their expertise with gunpowder and other explosives (invented in China back in the 9th century) to blast through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Chinese would be rewarded for their service and commitment with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and this here lovely plaque.

Chinese and Irish workers.

And while Promontory Point didn't seem to have any monuments dedicated to those on whose land the railroad was built, we can rely on the work of artists past to recall its impact on the American Indian and on the wildlife that was destroyed.

"The Far West: Shooting Buffalo on the Line of the Kansas Pacific Railroad" by Frank Leslie, 1871.

"Across the Continent: Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way" by Frances F. Palmer, 1868.

"North American Indians who have left their Reservation, attacking a train on the South Pacific Railroad, Arizona." From 'Le Petit Journal', Paris, 25 February, 1906.

"American Progress" by John Gast, 1872. Indeed, Lincoln would be proud.

DRRRINNNGGGG. Class is dismissed.