The Golden Spike: How a Photograph Celebrated the Transcontinental Railroad

The Golden Spike: How a Photograph Celebrated the Transcontinental Railroad — page 1
Chapter One HISTORIC CONNECTION Andrew J Russell stood near a tall tree towering by itself in a canyon in the northern reaches of the Utah Territory Standing beside the Union Pacific Railroad’s still unfinished new line the aged pine marked the spot at which the tracks had come exactly 1,000 miles 1,609 kilometers Company employees wanted to commemorate making it that far from Omaha in Nebraska Territory where construction had begun four years before They made a sign that read 1000 Mile Tree and hung it from the lowest branch of the pine A group of about 40 Union Pacific workers posed beneath the tree on January 9 1869 One of them had climbed to the top At the right moment Russell signaled him to wave and with a camera mounted on a tripod he captured the scene A photographer who had made a name for himself creating visual images of the recently fought Civil War Russell 39 had been hired the year before by the Union Pacific His assignment was to document one of the largest construction projects ever attempted in the United States In 1862 Congress had passed legislation authorizing the creation of the first transcontinental railroad which would link the eastern United States to the West Coast Some far-thinking people had been calling for such a project for almost 20 years Yet at the time Congress approved it not all Americans saw the wisdom of it A few even thought that building a railway line more than 1,700 miles 2,736 km long through vast stretches of largely unexplored wilderness was impossible They continued to echo the sentiment of a Cincinnati newspaper that had ridiculed the idea To claim that the railroad link would create settlements commerce and wealth the 1846 article said was like pledging to unite neighboring planets in our solar system and make them better acquainted with each other