The Railroad, part 15

In Promontory, Utah on the morning of May 10, 1869, the weather gods, or perhaps it were the railroad gods, smiled down and the day broke clear with white clouds high above in a blue sky. As early as seven o'clock spectators began to arrive at the two-rail gap between the tracks of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads where an American flag flapped in the cool breeze from atop a telegraph pole. Amongst the spectators there were, of course, whiskey peddlers to set up their tents and sell refreshments at a high price to match high spirits. Soon to follow was a construction train which unloaded its boisterous bounty of track layers and graders. It then backed away and shortly there after two Union Pacific trains arrived to stop just a short distance from the gap. The first train was Thomas Durant's three-car special. The second train transported four companies of the Twenty-first Infantry, their band included, all the way from San Francisco. Soon to add to the musical din was a brass band from Salt Lake City consisting of prominent Utah citizens.

While all of these fine folk were disembarking blue-clad Chinese workmen began leveling the gap between the two railroads. When this was completed they laid the last ties and rails. They bolted on the fishplates and drove all but the last few spikes.

At last, the anxiously awaited Central Pacific pulled in at 11:15. It chugged to a halt at its end of the gap. There, and long awaited, was the Central Pacific's "Jupiter" showing off its flared funnel stack. Pointed nose-to-nose with it, across the gap was the Union Pacific's No. 119 proudly displaying its straight cylindrical stack that was capped by a spark-arrester.

Bands played. Soldiers stood facing the tracks at parade rest. Dignitaries shook hands and congratulated each other. And Leland Stanford, evidently well prepared, produced two golden spikes, a silver spike, a combination iron, silver, and gold spike, a silver-plated sledgehammer, and lastly he presented a polished laurel tie. Thomas Durant, though sporting a stylish black velvet jacket, suffered from a sever headache, giving a suspicion that he'd popped one too many corks on the bubbly. Durant's only desired to get the thing done and over with. But now Grenville Dodge stepped in. Dodge objected to Stanford's showy equipment, and demanded they have a simple ceremony with Grenville, himself, driving the last iron spike, not gold, home. At 11:55, five minutes before the ceremony was to begin, Durant overruled Dodge and Stanford's program was followed.

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