Bringing a nation together through a spike
Text 
Friday, May 11, 2007 | 
No Comments [ Add Comment ]
No Comments [ Add Comment ]By Charles F. Trentelman
Standard-Examiner staff
Home » News 
» Story View
By Charles F. Trentelman
Standard-Examiner staff
PROMONTORY -- Thursday was all about the meeting of two train engines on the transcontinental rails at Promontory, but Robert Cox kept urging his granddaughter to keep it from happening.
Tiana Baea, 11, was standing between the two massive steam engines standing cowcatcher-to-cowcatcher.
"Push them apart!" her grandfather urged her. "Bend over and hold them!"
She pushed, but the engines didn't move an inch, mostly because they weigh about a thousand times more than she does. Cox, who lives in Bountiful, got the photo anyway.
This was her first time visiting the Golden Spike National Historic Site but his fifth or sixth, he said. "I taught U.S. history for 33 years and, in particular, I tried to teach the history of what was going on here."
Cox said the event re-enacted at Promontory, the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, was second only to the opening of the Erie Canal in its impact on commerce and growth in the United States.
Both were watersheds, he said, and changed the nation forever, which is why he likes to teach his grandchildren about them.
Cox had lots of company.
More than 2,000 people jammed the site to watch Thursday's celebration of the 138th anniversary of the joining. Under clear blue skies, re-enactors once again drove golden and silver railroad spikes like those used in 1869. When it was done, the entire crowd cheered as a re-enactor lifted a cane and pointed west, proclaiming, "This is the way to India!"
The spectators came from all over Utah and neighboring states. They came despite a rival, and heavily advertised, Golden Spike "re-enactment" also taking place Thursday at This Is The Place Monument in Salt Lake City.
That re-enactment, an effort to save the Heritage Park pioneer village at the monument, was attended by Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, but those putting on the festivities at Promontory didn't seem to care much about it.
"We look at it as publicity for ours," said Norm Nelson, Brigham City, one of the re-enactors who have been putting on Promontory's show for the past 60 years.
Asked last week about the competing engines, Ron Wilson, one of the engineers who drive the two locomotives at the Golden Spike site, dismissed them as barely worth comment.
They're fakes, he said, little more than pickup trucks with train shells and rubber tires. "We've got the real thing."
Those "real things," exact working duplicates of the original "Jupiter" and "119" steam engines, were lined up Thursday morning, brass gleaming, paint shining, on the track in front of the visitor center. Even standing still, they were vibrant with hissing steam and thrumming from their fire boxes.
"See the steam come out?" said Fiona Schroeder, of Ogden, to her children, Catie, 4, and Ethan, 2. "See it back up?"
She was standing about 20 feet away, taking pictures, when the engines got the order to move. Catie hunched her shoulders around her ears when the Jupiter, edging backward, tooted its whistle and rang its bell.
"They love trains," Schroeder said.
J. Wayne Johnson, of Brigham City, is one of the two longest-serving members of the cast who re-enact the ceremony in which the original Golden Spike was driven.
Johnson, 90, helped put on the very first re-enactment, which took place in 1947.
Ironically, considering Thursday's doings in Salt Lake, that is where the 1947 re-enactment took place as well, Johnson said. It was organized for Pioneer Days and was held in Salt Lake's Liberty Park. It wasn't held at Promontory until about 1951.
What is really funny, Johnson said, is that even though he is 90, his role in the show is as Grenville Dodge, chief engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad, who was the youngest Union general during the Civil War and was just 38 in 1869.
Les Dunn, 82, Brigham City, is a youngster, by comparison. He's only been doing these reenactments since 1969, the Centennial celebration, which was the year movie star John Wayne was guest speaker.
His favorite memory, he said, was from the 125th anniversary, which was attended by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Gordon B. Hinckley and the president of the Union Pacific Railroad.
It wasn't having such prominent people that impressed him, he said. It was the joke they performed.
The Union Pacific's grade work in Utah was done, in large measure, by Mormons. Unfortunately, the Union Pacific went broke and never paid them.
So, said Dunn, at the 125th anniversary ceremony, President Hinckley stood up, "and he said 'I stand in place of Brigham Young and I will accept payment now.'
"The president of the Union Pacific, not to be outdone, stood up and got out his wallet and took out a dollar and said 'Will you accept a down payment?' "
Hinckley took the money, Dunn said.
There are no comments for this page.
Add Your Comment
