(The following story by Kristen Moulton and Glen Warchol appeared on The Salt Lake Tribune website on May 11.)
PROMONTORY SUMMIT, Utah — With the high-pitched steam whistles of the Jupiter and No. 119 tooting, a telegraph operator tap-tap-tapping and the infernal northern Utah wind blowing, several thousand watched Thursday as history was re-created at this lonely northwestern Utah outpost.
At almost the precise moment that America’s first transcontinental railroad was completed on this spot 138 years ago, actors in top hats and vested black suits placed four ceremonial spikes – including the “last” golden spike – and then used a silver-plated maul to hammer in the final iron spike.
“Hip, hip hooray! Hip, hip hooray! Hip, hip hooray for the Union Pacific!” shouted visitors drawn for the reenactment, now in its 51st year at the Golden Spike National Historic Site.
“Hip, hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray for the Central Pacific!”
The day, though 15 degrees warmer, was much like the one from long ago. The sky was blue and cloudless. Sagebrush still covered the hills on this high summit 31 miles west of Brigham City.
The steam locomotives, 33-year-old replicas, looked just like the originals because they were built to the same specifications, the Jupiter for the Central Pacific and No. 119 by the Union Pacific.
And the script used by the actors, mostly members of the Golden Spike Association, was modeled on the words actually spoken that day in 1869 when a disorganized ceremony marked the culmination of a deadly, costly endeavor to link the industrial East with the resource-rich West.
Some 600 attended the original meeting of the rails.
The telegraph operator kept the outside world apprised with bulletin updates – “We have done praying,” he pounded at one point – and when the last spike was hammered, his message was simple: D-O-N-E.
Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific and governor of California, slammed the last spike into place after his counterpart, Tom Durant, vice president of the Union Pacific – tipsy from taking “medical refreshment” in his rail car – missed on his first strike with the maul. Richard Bouwhuis took the part of Stanford and George Ward played Durant.
“That’s what comes from refreshments,” mumbled Sacramento banker Edgar Mills, who emceed the original event. He was acted by John Stewart.
Brigham Young was conspicuously absent, miffed as he was over the railroads’ refusal to lay the rail through Salt Lake City. But several LDS apostles and an Ogden bishop, nicknamed the “railroad bishop,” were there.
On Tuesday, two days before the reenactment, Chinese Americans joined others in laying a wreath to honor those who lost their lives during the railroad’s construction.
The Central Pacific’s Chinese laborers laid the track the 690 miles from Sacramento, and many died along the way. The Union Pacific laborers, mostly from Ireland and Wales, laid the track 1,086 miles from Omaha.
Mormon laborers, who were never paid – perhaps another reason for Young’s absence – prepared 200 miles of rail bed through Utah Territory.
“I liked it,” said Tereza Urbanova of the Czech Republic, a doctoral exchange student at Utah State University who was joined by three friends at Promontory on Thursday.
“In Czech Republic, the history of the West and Indians are very popular.”
Alyric Ray of Layton returned to the place that captured his imagination when he was a child growing up in North Carolina. His parents brought him to Promontory on a vacation, and he returned as a teacher with deaf students for the 100th anniversary in 1969.
“You’ve got to come for the history!” he said.
Meanwhile, 75 miles away at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Emigration Canyon, a parallel reenactment of the historic meeting did not come off nearly as smoothly, despite the presence of two Utah governors – Jon Huntsman Jr. and an actor portraying territorial Gov. Brigham Young.
But only one “locomotive” showed up. Jupiter – actually a Ford pickup made over as a locomotive – pulled in from the west, right on cue.
But No. 119, never showed up from the east to meet at a ceremonial 4-foot section of rail.
“It didn’t get finished,” explained Ellis Ivory, chairman of the park’s foundation, who was presiding over the grand opening of the financially troubled park’s 2007 season. The two rubber-tired trams were built in Phoenix to haul visitors around the park’s steep hills.
But Ivory promised the crowd the park was “going to get better and better.”
Huntsman, who was at Promontory last year, good-naturedly bent to the task of driving the “golden” spike after first apologizing for not showing up in a period outfit. “This is the oldest suit I could find.”
The ceremony took place outside the Huntsman Hotel and adjoining saloon. Huntsman quipped his Mormon ancestors added the saloon, “making sure everyone is welcome in this great state.”
But at least one history purist was disappointed with the faux event.
“The real one was at Promontory. They shouldn’t have done this,” said George Zinn, who attended the 1969 centennial Golden Spike commemoration at the original site.
Still, most of the crowd high on Salt Lake City’s east bench – a majority were schoolchildren – appeared delighted by the period costumes, music, Mormon Battalion reenactors and a startling black-powder musket salute.
A group of girls in private-school uniforms broke into impromptu square dancing to a string orchestra.
“It’s wonderful what they’ve done,” said Shauna Tateoka of Salt Lake City. “They’ve rejuvenated the park and made it family-friendly. It’s marvelous.”
The heritage park has been financially foundering and suffering poor attendance. Last year, the Legislature staved off collapse by giving the park, which has more than 40 historic buildings and millions in artifacts, a $2 million bailout. Ivory, a home developer, took on the job of saving the park.
“Ellis has done exactly what is needed to be done to get us where we are today,” Huntsman said.
Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints Quorum of the Twelve member M. Russell Ballard told the crowd the season opening of the park, with its trains and freshly black-topped roads, is a “new day” for the park and in “making this a living legacy for people of all cultures.”
Meanwhile, back at Promontory, Illene Pett of Layton pulled a face when asked about the other golden spike commemoration.
“You might as well come to the place that’s real,” she said.
“But,” she added, “If you can’t make it here, why not there?”