Promontory' Lrrclil '
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e Promontory' lrrClil ' • I West Tour Ifyou wish to take the complete tour, turn right as you leave the VisitorCenter parking area and follow the well-marked gravel road west eight miles to the start. A fulltour willrequire about an hour and a half. Refer to the map on the inside front cover. o East Tour Ifyou prefer to take a shorter tour, turn left as you leave the parking area and begin with stop number 10 at the railroad cross- ing. This abbreviated tour willtake approx- imately one half hour. Refer to the map inside the back cover. For Your Safety Both tours are on original 1860s railroad bed. Traffic is one-way only. Please do not block others taking the tour. Pull off at wide sections of the grade when stopping. Be- cause the grade is narrow and often ele- vated, drivers should pay close attention to the road and travel at slow speeds. Historic Preservation Golden Spike National Historic Site was set aside by Congress to document and ex- plain the importance and construction of 10 <;; the Nation's first transcontinental railroad. All historic artifacts, plants, animals, and 1 natural objects are protected. Ifyou find an I object that may have historic significance, I ) 0 please leave it in place and tell a Ranger. The most valuable information is often not ( what was found, but where it was found. / Train Trivia Ifyou are taking the tour with children you may enjoy Train Trivia on the last page of r€) this booklet. Ask the questions as you drive I to the beginning of the tour route. That is how it might have appeared to you if The Promontory you traveled across the west by rail. Today those rails are gone. So too, the cars and Trail passengers who rode them. But you can re-Iivethe ride to Promontory by driving the A nineteenth century trip by train across an old transcontinental roadbed. As you do, entire continent. imagine it! please drive with caution. Open your senses to all that surrounds you. These You are riding on the newly completed same mountains echoed the locomotive's transcontinental railroad. Four hours ago whistle over 100 years ago. you passed into Utah from Nevada. With fascination you watch sagebrush and des- ert fly by. Take a look at your fellow passengers. In the half-filled car an emigrant family con- verses excitedly in another language. Across the aisle are four soldiers in their natty blue uniforms. Behind you are a ferret-faced gambler, a dozing business- Now All Is man, and two rough-looking characters whose piercing gaze encourages you to look elsewhere. Changed "Ajourney over the plains was a form- The windows are closed to keep out the idable undertaking that required great soot and cinders that float back from the patience and endurance. Now all is locomotive. But through the grimy pane changed," reported Frank Leslie's your eye catches a glimpse of section Illustrated Newspaper after the com- hands leaning on their shovels. The emi- pletion of the railroad. Early westward grant children see them too, and press their travelers had a choice of a six month noses against the windows and wave. In an passage by sailing ship around South instant, just before they disappear from America, a five to seven month walk view, one fellow raises his arm and waves alongside a wagon train, or a jarring back. You are one mile closer to Promon- twenty-four day ride in a stagecoach. tory. Each option was expensive and dangerous. In 1870, for a first class fare of $100, the passage between Omaha and Sacramento took just four and one half days in comparative comfort. Typical passenger train of the 1870s. ~TheLast =~parallel Climb Grading In April 1869 Chinese laborers employed Notice the second grade on your right and by the Central Pacific Railroad toiled on this the parallel cuts ahead. They are remnants stretch of railroad grade. Their hardest of the great railroad race to Promontory. labors already lay as monuments behind With huge land grants and government them - in the crossing of the Sierra Neva- subsidies to be gained, both the Union da Mountains of California and the deserts Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads of Nevada. These men welcomed the gen- strained hard to build more track than the tle, easy approaches to Promontory, from other. In 1864 Congress authorized each here only seven track miles away. company to send graders up to 300 miles ahead of its end-of-track. Here in Utah, the Travel with them as they work to a final Union Pacific and Central Pacific crews meeting at Promontory. But don't go fast. actually met and passed one another with Trains a century ago averaged speeds of roadbeds. The result was utter duplication only twenty miles per hour. of effort, with grades often running within sight of one another for miles. Congress finally stopped the wastefulness on April 10, 1869 by establishing Promontory Sum- mit as the meeting place. Thereafter each company concentrated on reaching Prom- ontory, the shallow valley ahead. Time has not erased the extravagance of this effort. Evidence of this parallel grading is best preserved here at Golden Spike National Historic Site. Chinese camp and dormitory train at end of track. ~CutandFiII ~Stair-Step On your right is an example of making the most of the construction materials avail- Cuts able. As cuts were cleared, the rock was Leave your coach here momentarily and conveniently used to fillin nearby low areas. take a closer look at the unfinished cut on In construction parlance this is known as your right. Please pull off to the left. Rock "cut and fill" construction. This fill was impasses like this were breached in stair- abandoned when Union Pacific workers step fashion. Several crews worked on a learned that Promontory was to be the cut, but from opposite sides and different meeting place and their end of track. levels. The result was a systematic and effi- cient method of removing rock. Mule drawn wagons carry debris from the This cut is attacked on five levels allowing "cut" in the foreground to the "fill" in the each crew to stay clear of the others. background. I can count five hundred men and one hundred fifty carts drawn by pa- tient mules hauling dirt to grade the A Hand-Built permanent track. there are plows, scrapers & etc. The mules are well Railroad trained; they climb up and down the The long winding grade you are traveling bank, stop at the right place and wait and the Union Pacific grade on your right till their load is dumped, then take are testimony to the organization of the their place in the line and go back to workers. Second Lieutenant Charles Cur- get another. They look like ants. The rier, U.S. Infantry, one of the first men to place is black with laborers; they travel on the completed transcontinental stand as near together as they can railroad, observed a filllike this under con- shovel. It's a funny sight to see five struction. hundred shovels going into the air at one time. Do you see the rock culvert in the Union Pacific grade? This and others like it were laid without mortar in 1869 and have sur- vived the years. Watch for others in the park. Sidings The grade widens here. In later years a siding was constructed at this site so that trains traveling in opposite directions could pass. Lower priority trains, usually freights, were required to wait on a siding while high- er priority trains, pulling passengers or mail, continued on. Sidings were built ab- out every three to fivemiles along the route. Railroad construction was labor intensive, with each worker assigned a specific job. A work train waits on this siding in Echo Canyon, Utah Territory. ~TenMilesIn OoeDay Here on April 28, 1869 the Central Pacific established a record that has never been equaled. The Union Pacific once laid eight and one half miles of track in a single day and By noon the Central Pacific laid six miles of boasted that their feat could not be track and stopped here at "Camp Victory" matched. Charles Crocker, Central Pacific for lunch. construction superintendent, was deter- mined to beat that record. He shrewdly waited until the distance between the two companies was so short that the Union Pacific could not try again. IrooMeo A correspondent from the San Francisco Evening Bulletin described the event: The iron rail used by the railroads came in twenty-eight foot sections and The scene is a most animated one. weighed fifty-six pounds per yard. From the first pioneer to the last tam- Eight Central Pacific tracklayers, sup- per, perhaps two miles, there is a thin ported by hundreds of other workers, line of 1,000 men advancing a mile carried all of the rail on that record an hour; the iron cars, with their liv- setting day. Ifeach man carried his fair ing and iron freight, running up and share he hefted 123 tons between sun- down; mounted men galloping back- rise and sunset. Relieftracklayers were ward and forward. Far in the rear are standing by but the first crew was so trains of material, with four or five proud of their work that a rest was not locomotives, and their water-tanks requested. and cars.. Keeping pace with the track-layers was a telegraph con- struction party, hauling out, and hanging, and insulating the wire, and when the train of offices and houses stood still, connection was made with the operator's office, and the business of the road trans- acted ...