Golden Spike of Montana
Deer Lodge, Montana
Forty years after the famous Transcontinental Railroad Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah, another Spike ceremony was held -- for the "Wedding of the Rails" between Chicago and Tacoma, Washington, on May 19, 1909. The meeting place was 2.5 miles east of Gold Creek, and at some point, no one knows when, railroad workers chiseled and painted an 11-foot-high oak log into a big Golden Spike to mark the spot -- a more impressive monument than the one in Utah.
The Spike stood until 1981, then was hauled off to the nearest town, Deer Lodge, where it lay in the highway maintenance warehouse for over 20 years. The weathered, rotted Spike was then restored by a group of volunteers, and re-erected on Dear Lodge's Main Street in 2003.
The Montana Spike has outlasted the railroad that it was built to celebrate, which went out of business in 1985.