Barbara J. Hamby

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The Golden Spike

Recently Floyd brought home a book from the King City Library titled, Nothing Like It In The World. He read it and I’ve nearly finished it now. This story of the building of the transcontinental railroad is fascinating.

My first acquaintance with this bit of history occurred when I was ten or eleven years old and attended a World’s Fair in San Francisco. A life-sized pageant of the driving of the golden spike at the completion of the railroads’ construction had me bug-eyed. None of my friends in the group I was with had any interest at all. I begged the chaperones to let me stay and see the presentation and promised to wait for them to pick me up when it was over. In my excitement and delight at having seen living history, I must have wandered off or become confused about where I was supposed to wait and I was lost on Treasure Island. Some terrified time later we got back together somehow. Exactly how I no longer recall.

There were other wonders on Treasure Island that day, but those huge locomotives and the cast depicting the final ceremony stood out in my mind all the years I was growing up.

Many years later, on a trip I’ve described in my travel logs, Al and I went to Promontory Point on a whim, since we were in the area. When we arrived, we learned that May 10th, that day, was the anniversary of the driving of the golden spike. A ceremony depicting the historical event, with full size replica locomotives and uniformed actors cast as railroad officials, was presented twice. We were there for the afternoon performance, reportedly less crowded than the earlier one.

Now that the book mentioned above has fallen into my hands, my memory is being refreshed of the history that preceded that final melodrama. I remember seeing the movie, Union Pacific, years ago and learning a version of the history at that time.

It occurs to me that we can be grateful to human greed for some of the wonders of the modern world. The railroad may be one of them.