Golden Spike National Historical Park
| Golden Spike National Historical Park | |||
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| Location: | Utah , United States | ||
| Next city: | Salt Lake City | ||
| Surface: | 11 km² | ||
| Founding: | April 2, 1957 | ||
| Visitors: | 40,000 (2005) | ||
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Golden Spike National Historical Park is a memorial under the administration of the National Park Service in the north of the US state of Utah on the edge of the Great Salt Lake near Salt Lake City . It commemorates a milestone in the history of the railroad in North America - the completion of the first transcontinental rail link on May 10, 1869 .
Plans for a rail link from the east coast to the west coast were first presented in the 1840s. In 1853 the US Congress financed studies on the routing of a transcontinental railroad. Due to the American Civil War , the implementation of the plans stopped, on the other hand, the importance of the railroad as a means of transport for goods and people became apparent in the course of the war, so that at the request of President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, Congress ordered the construction of a rail link to California .
The construction
After the end of the war, the repair and expansion of the US railroad network was given high priority. In 1865, the Union Pacific railway companies from Omaha , Nebraska and the Central Pacific in Sacramento , California began building a rail link between their networks. The federal government subsidized the construction with grants for each laid track and gave the companies the land for the track and stations. Both companies competed for the distances achieved.
In February 1869, the Central Pacific , coming from the west, reached a range of hills to the north of the Great Salt Lake in Utah and began to fill a deep gorge halfway up the climb with a dam, now called Big Fill , to guide the rails over it. On March 8th, Union Pacific reached the city of Ogden on the east bank of the salt lake from the east and on March 28th began work on a wooden construction in the form of a trestle bridge , now called Big Trestle , over the same , which was bold for the time Gorge on.
On April 10, the US Congress decided that the rail networks should be connected at Promontory Summit , the highest pass in the north of the range of hills, and the two companies joined forces. They agreed to lead the route over the bridge and waived the work on the dam that had already started. Central Pacific also bought the line from the summit to five miles from Ogden and leased it from Union Pacific for five miles for 999 years , so that the official gateway was in Ogden station. Since the bridge had poor quality, the dam was completed six months later and the railway line moved there.
The connection
Both companies reached their destination on the afternoon of May 9, 1869, the last rail was laid on May 10 and the last nail was attached at noon. Union Pacific ran locomotive No. 119 from the east, Central Pacific with locomotive No. 60, known as "Jupiter", from the west to the junction.
Leland Stanford , the President of Central Pacific and later Governor of California , brought a gold rail nail , made at short notice at his own expense, engraved with the names of the railway company directors and the words " The last Spike ". Contrary to popular belief, this nail was never used in the rails. It is now in the Stanford University Museum . A second, smaller gold nail and a silver nail were made by other participants in the celebration.
Golden Spike National Historical Park
With the construction of a new line, the so-called " Lucin Cutoff " (Lucin abbreviation) , which was opened in 1904 and runs about 40 km south of the Promontory Summit, the historic site of the Golden Spike has not been used since then, in 1942 the tracks were between the towns of Lucin and Corinne because the steel was needed as a war effort. The Lucin Cutoff crosses the Great Salt Lake at Promontory Point, the southern end of the Promontory Mountains, originally by means of a trestlework bridge. The bridge was later replaced by a causeway .
After that, the place of the celebration fell into oblivion for a while until it was declared a National Historic Site in 1957 - although it was private property - and bought by the federal government in 1965. Today there is a small visitor center with a museum about the construction of the transcontinental railroad and several information boards on a street to the most important points in the area. In the summer months there are daily demonstrations with replicas of the two historic locomotives. In winter, the locomotives can be viewed in the locomotive shed. In March 2019, the memorial was rededicated to the status of a National Historical Park .
In addition to the actual summit with the visitor center and engine shed , the park area also includes the historic route a few kilometers to the east and west. This means that the gorge and the dam are also part of the memorial. In the immediate vicinity is the Chinese Arch , a natural rock gate dedicated to the Chinese workers involved in building railways.
The merger of the transcontinental railroad was included in 1968 by the American Society of Civil Engineers in the List of National Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks . The Golden Spike was selected in 2007 to represent the State of Utah in the State Quarter .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Ceremony at "Wedding of the Rails," May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah . May 10, 1869. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
