Remembering the railroad: Golden Spike marks 141 years

PROMONTORY — Bells and whistles, the chugga chugga chugga of the two locomotives, along with the smell of the steam engines and the milieu of characters from 1869 created an atmosphere that any train lover would enjoy.

"It's very exciting. We've got lots of people walking around in period costume that look fantastic; it's just got a good energy," park ranger Karissa DeCarlo said.

"We have a good time out here," said Jack Lucas, who plays Leland Stanford — the Central Pacific railroad investor who drove in the Golden Spike — in the re-enactment ceremony.

When the locomotives — the two steam engines, the Jupiter of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific's No 119 — pulled up nose-to-nose, visitors went wild and children blew their train whistles.

Visitors also got in on the fun when they rushed to get in the re-enactment of the "champagne" photo.

The Bear River High School Marching Band played a few classic old-time numbers that got children up and dancing.

Once the re-enactment ceremony started, the crowd went silent. The two engines, No. 119 and the Jupiter, framed the stage as the crowd sang the national anthem and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Once everyone was seated, the speeches began.

Traditional speeches by actors were not only authenticated by costume but by language and speech. They carried themselves and spoke as if they were straight out of an Old West Clint Eastwood film.

Keynote speaker and historian Kyle Wyatt spoke of the people who labored on the first linking of the nation's Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

As the vice president of the Union Pacific said, "The East and the West have come together. Never since history commenced in record of human events has man been called upon to meet the completion of a work so magnificent in contemplation and so marvelous in execution."

For the finale of the ceremony, four men tapped out in Morse code on the Golden Spike the letters D-O-N-E, "Done."

e-mail: ebassett@desnews.com