The completion of America's first transcontinental railroad actually occurred at Promontory Summit, some 35 miles to the north - in complete contradiction to both a lot of history books and the popular imagination.
The location is just one of many misconceptions surrounding that important event. The way the story is usually told, Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific met Thomas Durant of the Union Pacific at Promontory Point, where they drove a golden spike into the railroad's last remaining tie, thus bringing to a close a brilliantly-executed plan for uniting the two coasts.
In fact, things didn't happen quite like that. The Federal acts authorizing construction neglected to specify where the two rail lines were supposed to meet, and the incentives for laying track (namely money and land) were so lucrative that toward the end the companies had actually proceeded past each other and begun to work in parallel for about two hundred miles. The Government finally said enough was enough, and Promontory Summit was declared to be the roads' linking point.
There also wasn't a single spike involved, but rather four - two of which were indeed made of gold. The State of Nevada forged a third spike made of silver, while Arizona Territory provided the fourth one, made of iron with gold- and silver-plating. To make sure no actual hammering was necessary, a special railroad tie was pre-drilled to receive the spikes so that they could effectively be dropped in. As it turned out, this wasn't a bad idea. Things worked out well for the ceremony itself, but when Stanford and Durant tried to duplicate the event later by driving in an ordinary spike to replace one of the ceremonial ones, both men missed.
Today Promontory Summit is known, appropriately, as Golden Spike NHS, and visiting it may require a bit of fancy engineering of your own. There's no rail service there anymore - the last tracks were pulled up for scrap during World War II - nor is it on a public bus line. You'll do fine if you're in a private vehicle, however. The site is located about 30 miles west of Brigham City, which in turn is about 60 miles north of Salt Lake City. Remote, yes - but by Utah standards, pretty darned accessible. (This is a state, after all, where you can easily drive a hundred miles between gas stations in some places.)
