Golden Spike Cultural Landscape Report

¹ "Promontory Point" was another name that was occasionally then used for Promontory Summit. It should not be confused with Promontory Point on the Great Salt Lake. Another point of possible confusion stems from current local residents referring to the entire peninsula of land that juts southward into the Great Salt Lake as "the Promontory" or simply "Promontory".

² James McCague explains that the only explicit reference he ever found to this story was in Grenville Dodge's How We Built the Union Pacific Railroad, written many years later. McCague notes, however, that Harper's Weekly included a contemporaneous illustrated drawing of one of these explosions. On the contrary, Bain finds no contemporaneous support for the stories of violence (1999:658).

³ Other sources indicate that Dillon gave this order to begin laying track at the end of the Central Pacific's track and move eastward from there on April 30 (see, for example, Klein 1987b:2 19). The Eicholtz diary entry more definitively provides the actual date of Dillon's order.

⁴ Ames introduces other evidence that suggests that Durant staged this event in order to force Oliver Ames to send the money. In a May 12, 1869 letter to Dodge, Oliver Ames wrote that a tie-supply firm, James W. Davis and Company, may have furnished the men who stopped the train. "Could it be one of Durant[']s plans to have these men get their pay out of the Road and we suffer for his benefit?" asked Ames. "Durant is so strange a man that I am prepared to believe any sort of rascality that may be charged ag[ai]nst him" (1969:323).

⁵ Utley doubts the truth of a story, repeated in many secondary sources including Bain (1999), that the Union Pacific workers actually built a siding and a "wye" during the night of May 9, thereby preventing Central Pacific workers from doing it the next day as they had planned and thereby ensuring that Promontory would be a Union Pacific station. He bases his doubt on contemporary newspaper accounts (1960:63). Bain cites the autobiography of Grenville Dodge (1999:658).

⁶ In that this reporter observed that on the morning of May 10 workers were finishing the "wye" switch, this account tends to corroborate the story that the Union Pacific crews worked all night to build the siding and wye.

⁷ The laurel tie eventually burned during the San Francisco fire of 1906. It had been taken to the Southern Pacific's main offices there from Sacramento in 1890.

⁸ The first of the two was first returned to the donor and then later given to Stanford University in 1892; the second may have been given to General Dodge and has since disappeared.

⁹ The silver spike was sometime later sent to Stanford who subsequently donated it to Stanford University in the 1890s.

¹⁰ The silver maul or sledge was later also given to Stanford University.

¹¹ Bain (1999) explains that "since the track ran in a southwest-to-northeast direction in the summit valley, chroniclers have variously described Stanford, for instance, as standing south of the tracks southeast of the tracks and east of the tracks. The ceremony participants considered positions in east-west terms for symbolic reasons" (fn. 29, 756) Bain therefore places Stanford as standing on the east side of the track and Durant on the west side (662-663).

¹² His name might also have been "Skilling." Sources disagree, which may reflect different spellings used by different newspaper reporters.

¹³ One of these regular spikes was given to Union Pacific fireman, David Lemon, who asked assistant superintendent H. M. Hoxie for a souvenir. In 1954, the iron spike was sent to the Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco. It was later donated to Stanford University.

¹⁴ The cost of the Union Pacific's section of the transcontinental railroad totaled $63.2 million and about half of that represented the federal government's loan to the company. It has been estimated that UP's profit exceeded $16 million or approximate 200 percent, as compared to the government's estimate of 27.2 percent. The estimated cost for the construction of the Central Pacific's portion of the Pacific Railroad was $36 million. "The company received land grants and government bonds valued at $38.2 million, while Stanford admitted that $54 million in Central Pacific stock transferred to the Contract and Finance Company in payment of construction contracts represented virtually net profit" (Carmen and Mueller 1926:336-338; Utley 1960:22).

A breakdown of the lands granted and the government loans made to both companies, respectively, is as follows: The completed road was 1,774 miles long. The Union Pacific received 13,875,200 acres while the Central Pacific received 8,832,000. The UP built 526 miles for which they received $16,000 per mile; 408 miles at $32,000 per mile; 150 miles at $48,000 per mile, for a total of $28,456,000. The CP built 12 miles at $16,000 per mile; 522 miles at $32,000 per mile; and 156 miles at $48,000, for a total of $24,386,000 (Crofutt 1869:21).

¹⁵ Railroad historian Gerald Best states that the terminus officially changed in March of 1870 (1969a: 137), but given that the Supreme Court determined that the Union Pacific Railroad was completed to Ogden on November 6, 1869, it seems logical that the earlier date for the change is the correct one.

¹⁶ More historical research is necessary to provide more specific details concerning the construction history on the east slope during the 1870s. Newspaper accounts, especially from early Corinne newspapers, may provide this information. Ayres (1982) found little information in Southern Pacific Railroad record.s, noting that many records were probably destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco (91-92).

¹⁷ Ayres explains that a 1920 Southern Pacific Railroad map provides the water tank's dimensions and locates it on the north side of the tracks. Interviewees differ on their memory of this, but most also place the tank on the north side (1982:108).

¹⁸ The congressional appropriation for this survey considered Council Bluffs, Iowa, the eastern terminus of the railroad, although the House resolution indicated that Omaha was the eastern end. Captain W. J. Twining, in charge of the entire survey, treated Council Bluffs as the eastern terminus. He noted that in 1875 the Supreme Court had provided authority for this change. See House Executive Document 38, 44th Congress, 2d session, Feb. 1, 1877:4.

¹⁹ The agreement was actually signed in 1956.

²⁰ The citation is 79 Stat., 426.

²¹ The citation is 90 Stat., 2732.

²² The citation is 94 Stat., 1133. The expanded acreage was based on "Boundary Map, Golden Spike National Historic Site, Utah," no. 431-80,026, dated December 6, 1978.

²³ National Register Criteria: The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association and:

A. That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or

B. That are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or

C. That embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or

D. That have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

²⁴ Four levels of treatment have been identified for cultural resource properties. These include:

Preservation. The act or process of applying measures necessary to sustain the existing form, integrity, and materials of a historic property. Includes initial stabilization work, where necessary, as well as ongoing preservation maintenance and repair of historic materials and features.

Rehabilitation. The act or process of making possible a compatible use for a property through repair, alterations, and additions while preserving those portions or features which convey its historical, cultural, or architectural values;

Restoration. The act or process of accurately depicting the form, features, and character of a property as it appeared at a particular period of time by means of the removal of features from other periods in history and reconstruction of missing features from the restoration period; or

Reconstruction. The act or process of depicting, by means of new construction, the form, features, and detailing of a non-surviving site, landscape, building, structure, or object for the purpose of replicating its appearance at a specific period of time and in its historic location.

²⁵ A "Wildland Fire Management Plan" was completed for the NHS in 1998.