Where is promontory summit utah

Western settlers longed for a faster and easier way to travel across the West. Emigrants traveling by horseback, wagon, or foot required several months to cross the plains and the Rocky Mountains. Trains made travel faster, safer, and much less physically taxing, but there was no transcontinental railroad that connected the country from east to west in the mid-nineteenth century.

Technology and political incentives made it feasible for the country to contemplate a transcontinental railroad. By the late nineteenth century, the transcontinental railroad came to fruition. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad companies laid hundreds of miles of tracks, but needed a place to connect. On April 8, , Grenville M. Hewes donated the spike to Stanford University art museum in Promontory Point is thirty-five miles south of Golden Spike.

The correct name for this location is Promontory Summit. For unknown reasons, some reporters and railroad officials in wrote that the transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Point, and this falsehood has been perpetuated throughout history in textbooks, films, and all other forms of media.

Where does the name "Promontory" come from? A "promontory" by definition is a high point of land or rock projecting into a sea or other body of water. The Promontory Mountains span the length of the Promontory Peninsula.

Promontory Summit Visitor Center and Last Spike Site and historic location of the town of Promontory is located at the highest point of the Promontory pass. What happened to the town of Promontory? From May-December , Promontory was the terminus of the transcontinental railroad the junction point for Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads.

Passengers and freight were transferred here at Promontory, which was known to be a wild town with gambling, looting and "sporting women". When the junction moved to Ogden in Promontory became primarily a helper station, housing mostly railroad workers and their families.

Are these the original locomotives? They are within one-quarter inch of actual size, and are fully functional in all respects. What happened to the original locomotives? This size and type of engine was outmoded and under-powered by the turn of the century. There eventually came a time when they just were not worth repairing any more. The N o. Were the original engines really that shiny and colorful? They were built during the Victorian Age, and reflected the designs and craftsmanship of the era.

By June , the population at Promontory Summit had been reduced to about 40 people. Most were employees of the CP railroad. The CP carried out extensive redevelopment of the rail infrastructure on Promontory Summit.

The track was realigned, a roundhouse and turntable were built, and a freight depot and locomotive yard were added. It also gained extensive support facilities for workers, including a railroad eating stop, engine helper station, and quarters for the Chinese section crew. In the final decades of the 19th century, Promontory Station was used by large ranching firms, such as John W.

Kerr, John L. Edwards, and Charles Crocker 's, to ship their cattle to the stockyards in San Francisco and Chicago. At the turn of the 20th century, wheat farmers had begun to change the landscape around Promontory with farms and families. However, during the droughts of the s , individual arable farmers moved away from Promontory, leading to the consolidation of the land holdings.

The railroad across Promontory Summit remained in continuous use for 35 years. However, despite its historic importance, it was part of a large detour undertaken by the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads because of the Great Salt Lake.

As trains became longer and heavier, additional engines were often required to pull them up to the summit. Although Union Pacific engineers had initially considered a direct route across the lake, they opted for the surveyed line through Promontory due to cost and schedule reasons.

This changed when the Southern Pacific which had acquired Central Pacific operations in built a wooden railroad trestle across the Great Salt Lake between Ogden and Lucin , between February and March The The last regularly scheduled transcontinental passenger train to pass through Promontory station was on Sunday, September 18, When the Great Depression led to a dramatic fall in revenues from railroad traffic, the SP decided to abandon the line when it failed to meet its operating costs.

On September 8, , an "unspiking" ceremony was held to commemorate the lifting of the last rail over Promontory Summit; the old steel rails were used for the war effort in World War II. By crossing the lake, the cutoff avoided the curvatures and grades over Promontory Summit.

In the s, the wooden trestle bridge was replaced with a parallel concrete-stone causeway built by the Morrison Knudsen construction company.