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The golden spike is the solid-gold railroad spike which was hammered in by Leland Stanford to commemorate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the world, when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads met on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit in Box Elder County in the Utah Territory, now part of northern Utah.
The idea to complete the last link in the transcontinental railroad with a spike made out of gold was due to David Hewes, a San Francisco financier and contractor who was also Stanford's wife's brother-in-law. The spike had been manufactured earlier that year especially for the event by the William T. Garret Foundry in San Francisco. A special tie of pre-bored polished California laurel was chosen to complete the line where the spike would be driven.
Originally the ceremony was to be held on May 8, but it was postponed two days because of bad weather and a labor dispute that delayed the arrival of the Union Pacific delegation.
On May 10, in anticipation of the ceremony, the Union Pacific's No. 119 and Central Pacific's "Jupiter" locomotives engines were drawn face-to-face on Promontory Summit, separated only by the width of a single tie. A crowd of over 3000 government and railroad officials and track workers was present to witness the event.
Before the last spike was driven, three other commemorative spikes, presented by the other three members of the "Big Four", had been previously driven in the pre-bored laurel tie:
The absence of a spike from the Utah Territory, as well as the absence of Mormon officials, was considered conspicuous.
With the locomotives drawn so near, the crowd pressed so closely around Stanford and the other railroad officials that the ceremony became somewhat disorganized, leading to varying accounts of the actual events.
To drive the final spike, Stanford lifted a silver hammer and drove the spike into the tie, completing the line.
Immediately afterwards, the golden spike and the laurel tie were removed and replaced with a regular iron spike and normal tie. At exactly 12:47, the last iron spike was driven, finally completing the line. Stanford and Hewes missed the spike, but the single word "done" was nevertheless flashed by telegraph around the country. The event has come to be considered one of the first nationwide media events.
After the ceremony, Stanford gave the golden spike to Hewes, who in turn gave it to the Stanford Museum in 1892. The last laurel tie was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
In 1942, the old rails over Promontory Summit were salvaged for war effort. The event was marked by a ceremonial "undriving" of the last iron spike. The original event had been all but forgotten, except by local residents who erected a commemorative marker in 1943. The years after the war saw a revival of interest in the event. In 1948, the first re-enactment was held.
In 1957, Congress established the Golden Spike National Historic Site to preserve the area around Promontory Summit as closely as possible to its appearance in 1869. The site also contains working replicas of the original locomotive engines present at the ceremony which are drawn up face-to-face each Saturday during the summer for a recreation of the original event.
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