Promontory City, Utah was the last of the railroad boom towns. In May of 1869, when the Union Pacific connected at last with the Central Pacific, Promontory consisted of one long street filled with tents and false-fronted wooden buildings. These constructions, wood and canvas alike, were set back only a few yards from the new railroad track.
The Central Pacific reached this point that lay in a dry basin of sagebrush, surrounded on three sides by mountains, on April 30. It would be another week before the Union Pacific track layers came into site. It was planned, by mere men, that on May 8th the two great railroads, now with just twenty-five hundred feet of empty grading between them, would be connected. However, fate had yet to decide on what date She wanted the connection to be made.
On the afternoon of May 8th, Central Pacific's president Leland Stanford, with numerous dignitaries, arrived in a special train for the connecting and ready to celebrate. But Stanford was informed, by Jack Casement, that the joining of the rails would be delayed until May 10. Fate had dumped heavy rains on a place called Weber Canyon and a part of the Union Pacific tracks there had washed away. The special train carrying Thomas Durant, Sidney Dillon, and others was stalled until repairs could be completed.
This was not the first delay Durant and his party had encountered on their journey to Promontory. Previously, on May 6, Durant's special train had arrived in Piedmont, Wyoming, coming from the east. It was met by an armed mob consisting of several hundred railroad workers who switched Durant's train onto a sidetrack. There, they chained its wheels to the rails. Durant was then informed that he, and his associates, were now their prisoners. The cause for the eruption was that these railroad workers were far over due to be paid for their labor. The exact amount of the wages owed is undetermined, ranging from some $12,000 to as much as $235,000.
Brown, in his Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow suggests that some historians believe that "Mormons were leaders in this affair." It seems that the railroad repeatedly ignored Brigham Young's demands for payment for the grading contract he had signed with them. Soldiers were called upon to rescue Durant and party but had no effect. In the end, Durant was forced to have payroll funds telegraphed from New York.
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