The crowd cheers as Governor Leland Stanford drives the Golden Spike at Promontory Summit, Utah to complete the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869.
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On July 15, 1923, President Warren Harding drove the “Golden Spike” at Nenana, signifying the completion of the interior Alaska Railroad.
Where is the real golden spike? It is located in Palo Alto, California. Leland Stanford's brother-in-law, David Hewes, had the spike commissioned for the Last Spike ceremony. Since it was privately owned it went back to California to David Hewes.
Otherwise known as the Golden Spike Ceremony, this historic event not only celebrates the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, named the Pacific Railroad, but it also recognizes the significance of the immigrant workforce that helped the nation accomplish what many believed was impossible.
While much of the original transcontinental railroad tracks are still in use, the complete, intact line fell out of operation in 1904, when a shorter route bypassed Promontory Summit.
The transcontinental railroad was built in six years almost entirely by hand. Workers drove spikes into mountains, filled the holes with black powder, and blasted through the rock inch by inch. Handcarts moved the drift from cuts to fills.