Golden Spike
Iron nail, lead bullet
I spent most of August on a road trip through parts of the American west. This is the third of series of posts on what I learned. You can read the first and second parts here.
On Sunday afternoons in England in the fifties and sixties, BBC TV would show old black and white movies, with early westerns well represented. If it was raining, which was not a rare event, it was a family tradition to sit around the TV and watch. One such movie was Union Pacific, directed by Cecil B. DeMille in 1939, that tells the story of building the Union Pacific railroad from Omaha, Nebraska, to join with the Central Pacific Railroad (CPR) at Promontory Summit, Utah, a union consummated with the driving of a golden spike and spawning the country's first transcontinental railroad. Although initially running just from Omaha to Sacramento, the route was soon extended, enabling coast-to-coast travel for passengers and freight, truly a pivotal moment in the history of the United States. The movie is in black and white, and features the original golden spike, borrowed from Stanford University.
After another night camping at an Oregon Trail water crossing, this time the rather buggy Farewell Bend State Recreation Area on the Snake River, I cross that river into Idaho, which also has some Oregon Trail signage, although not as extensive as that in the trail's namesake state. Soon, I84 drops the trail altogether and heads over Malad Summit, out of the Columbia Basin, into the Great Basin, and shortly afterwards into Utah.
I'm always looking for a way to make the drive down the I84 and I15 corridor through Ogden and Salt Lake City to Provo more entertaining, and a detour to Promontory Summit sounds just the ticket. It's midafternoon and it's hot as I pull off I84 onto Utah 83 towards Promontory Summit, home of the Golden Spike National Historical Park on the site of the original ceremony. A rather phallic piece of roadside industrial yard art, the Northrop Grumman Rocket Garden, is a bonus anachronism.
The Golden Spike was placed by Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific Railroad, former Governor of California and its sitting Senator, and who would go on to found Stanford University, which explains why the original spike is there. In an interesting side story, Stanford University was originally named Leland Stanford Junior University after the Stanfords' son Leland Jr. who died of typhoid at age fifteen. After Leland Stanford's death in 1893, his widow Jane ran the university until her death from strychnine poisoning in 1905. Although it was successfully covered up at the time, David Starr Jordan, then President of the university, has been implicated in her murder. While Stanford was “merely” racist, Jordan was a eugenicist. I highly recommend Lulu Miller's book on Jordan, Why Fish Don't Exist, for those who want to further dive down this rabbit hole.
The park features replica locomotives and other railroad paraphernalia, as well a movie about the railroad. The movie takes a look at the history of the railroads through my two favorite lenses - ‘‘What's the water story?’’ and ‘‘Who is being excluded here?’’ A piece of the water story is that the railroad workers found the water in the Great Salt Lake not only unfit to drink, but too salty even to use in the locomotives' steam boilers. Excluded from the ceremony, and from the Hollywood versions of the story, were the Chinese1, Irish, and other laborers who did the hard physical work, from blasting rock to laying track, of bringing the railroads to this meeting point. To its credit, the movie at the National Historical Park gives these laborers their due.
The golden spike in the laurel wood tie became an iron nail in the coffin of the Oregon Trail, which became redundant at that point, and, along with the Northern Pacific Railroad through North Dakota, a lead bullet in the herds of bison and the plains Indians who depended on them. The movie pulls no punches in calling this out for what it was; a state-sanctioned genocide through starvation effected by the deliberate mass slaughter of bison by railroad-borne riflemen and US Army soldiers2,3.
I hope the movie's truth and sanity about American history survive the recent executive order4 aimed at ‘‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.’’5 Golden Spike National Historical Park already has its very own snitch sign, taped to the door, inviting the public to rat out the Park Service.
Back in the lobby, three women staff are behind the ticket and souvenir counter. I wait till no one else is around and go over to say hello. I learn that two are rangers, the other a volunteer.
I offer them the same words I offered yesterday / at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. ‘‘I have many friends who work for the federal government - EPA, Department of Defense, NOAA, USDA - and I know it's really hard for you all right now. I just want you to know I appreciate you and all you're doing, and I wish you all good luck.’’
They each smile nervously, look briefly left and right, then, with eyes looking straight ahead, whisper, almost in unison, ‘‘Thank you.’’
The Great Basin is an endorheic basin. No rivers leave it. Water from rain and snow that fall in the Basin and on the surrounding mountains does not drain out; most of it winds up in the Great Salt Lake, where it evaporates, leaving, you guessed it, salt behind. The same entrapment seems to hold for air pollution. Temperature inversions are common in the Basin, where a layer of warmer air aloft traps a layer of cooler air below, along with the attendant air pollution, and that’s the case as I approach the Great Salt Lake, except that today it’s a layer of hot air trapped by a layer of even hotter air, which sounds an awful lot like a metaphor for something, doesn’t it, like Congress, maybe?
I had intended to camp tonight on Antelope Island, a refuge for antelope, elk, and bison, but it’s so smoggy that I can't even see it, the temperature is 97 degrees, there's no shade at the camp ground, and no water on the island, as the park building is being renovated, so l relocate to a hotel in Ogden, Utah, to where the railroad junction was also relocated from Promontory. A pleasant surprise is the best Indian meal I’ve had in a long time.
The following day I head over Soldier Summit, leaving the Great Basin and the smog behind, and gratefully dropping into the Colorado River watershed on my way to Moab with a slight detour that I’ll tell you all about next time.
Thanks, as always, for reading or listening. I'll be back soon with the fourth part of this trilogy. To make sure you don't miss it, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
What eating bitterness has to do with Chinese food - High Country News. The Chinese immigrants who built the Transcontinental Railroad quietly endured racism and violence, fostering a complicated legacy for Chinese-Americans. Paisley Rekdal September 12, 2025
Whew, that sign. I've been revisiting Harry Potter for some reason, and am reminded very forcefully of Dumbridge's Inquisitorial Squad.
I can’t decide which is more tragic. The wanton slaughter of buffalos, tantamount to slaughter of Native Americans, or the current administration. Applicable modifiers are too well known.
Without fail, John, today’s post was riveting. For which I’m grateful.