Promontory Summit 1869: Durant's Kidnapping, Missed Swings and Lucin Cutoff

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Promontory Summit, at about 4,902 feet in Box Elder County, Utah, is where the Central Pacific building east from Sacramento met the Union Pacific building west from Omaha. The Central Pacific's workforce of more than 4,000 was two thirds Chinese immigrants, and a chosen Chinese and Irish crew laid the final 10 miles of track in one 12 hour shift, handling 500 pound rails at about two a minute. The ceremony set for May 8 slipped two days because more than 400 unpaid Union Pacific graders and tie cutters chained Vice President Thomas Durant's car to a siding at Piedmont, Wyoming, until he wired for their back wages. At the flooded Devil's Gate Bridge his engineer refused to cross and pushed the passenger cars over unpowered, leaving Durant waiting for Union Pacific No. 119 to rescue him.

On May 10 Leland Stanford and Durant tapped four ceremonial gold and silver spikes into a pre-drilled laurel tie, which was then swapped for pine and iron. Stanford missed the wired last spike and Durant missed the tie entirely, but the telegraph operator sent the signal and the word DONE anyway. Travel across the country dropped from up to six months to as little as eight days. The camp at Promontory was being dismantled by December, Ogden became the junction, and in 1904 the 102 mile Lucin Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake bypassed the summit. The rails were pulled up for World War II scrap in 1942.

• Neither locomotive in the famous photos, No. 119 and the Central Pacific's Jupiter, was the engine originally chosen.
• Chinese workers may be missing from A.J. Russell's photo because they were dining as guests of honor in J.H. Strobridge's car.
• The Hughes golden spike went to Stanford University and was lent to Cecil B. DeMille for the 1939 film Union Pacific.
• The second gold spike and the laurel tie are thought lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
• At the 150th anniversary in 2019, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao honored the Chinese railroad workers.