Transcontinental Cover Up?

Another Revelation by "Mr. Picky"

You've heard the story. You've even seen photos that "prove" it. It's pounded into the head of every American schoolchild over the age of five. The US transcontinental railroad was completed when a golden spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, linking East and West on May 10, 1869.

It's a lie.

The Golden Spike National Historic Site, 45 minutes from nowhere in Utah, does a good job promoting the lie, and pulls in a pretty tidy profit for Uncle Sam in the process. Replica Golden Spikes sell for $25 apiece in the gift shop. But don't look for the real Golden Spike here, or anywhere in Utah; it's in the Art & History Museum at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Why? Because the spike was given to Leland Stanford Jr.'s dad, the president of the Central Pacific Railroad and the governor of California, by David Hewes (who had it engraved).

Other things you're probably unaware of:
• The Golden Spike was only 73% gold .
• The Golden Spike was never driven into the Ceremonial Last Tie (which isn't here, either -- made of laurel especially for the event, it was torn to splinters by rabid souvenir hounds minutes after the ceremony). The spike was positioned for nudging into a pre-drilled hole, like shelf hardware in a ready-to-assemble Home Depot cabinet. Leland Stanford took a swing and at first missed -- and they still named a university after him (okay, his railroad fortune did help pay for the place).
• The real Last Spike, the one that ultimately fastened the final rail and made it safe for transport, was made out of everyday iron, driven into place by a nameless laborer -- likely from China or Ireland.
• The two locomotives on display at the Site are not the locomotives that met here in 1869. The original "Jupiter" and "No. 119" were sold for scrap years ago for $1,000 apiece.
• Most important of all, Promontory Summit is NOT the site where nation's first transcontinental railroad was completed. No matter what the US Department of the Interior tells you (and they make snide remarks here when you mention the TRUTH), the transcontinental railroad wasn't completed until 15 months later, when East met West near Strasburg, Colorado.

The first continuous chain of rails from ocean to ocean met in a dry creek bed named Comanche Crossing by the undersung Kansas Pacific Railroad. For many years a small, drab, concrete pylon marked the site -- nothing like the 56-foot-tall Golden Spike replica, relic of some forgotten movie promotion -- that casts a shadow of shame over Council Bluffs, Iowa -- eastern terminus of the Union Pacific's road and a city obviously IN BED with the Feds. The pylon has since been moved into nearby Strasburg, where it stands in Lions Park next to the monkey bars.

There's no hype here; no Congressionally-authorized 2200-acre National Historic Site; no fat cat 19th century industrialist's golden bauble; no ugly, brown, National Historic Site road signs erected and maintained with your tax dollars. Just a tiny park with a swing set on one end, the pylon on the other, and a lot of quiet pride and courage in between.

September 2005: North Platte, NE's grand scheme to erect a Golden Spike Tower is still underway, shimmering spike visible yet. The plan is subsidized by a controversial hotel occupancy tax. North Platte visitors will be paying that tax for decades, but they'll also benefit by gazing on the golden spike tower no matter where in town they're sleeping....

May 1999: The city of North Platte, NE, plans to build a 15-story Golden Spike Tower overlooking a railroad yard containing 10,000 freight cars near I-80. The tower will be railroad spike-shaped and covered with gold-enameled metal. Scheduled for completion in July 2000, it will drive yet another spike in the public's understanding of where the transcontinental railroad really met. North Platte is 600 miles away from Promontory, UT.