Visited: Thursday, July 30, 2009
Now _this_ is my type of NPS site. Nothing against the sites offering natural beauty - I enjoy them very much - but I love the history one can learn at sites such as Golden Spike. For some reason, history is a lot more interesting when one has been there. The transcontinental railroad never really captured my imagination, until visiting the site of the golden spike.
The site is out in the middle of nowhere - there's really nothing there save for the national park site. The museum is well done, if small; what really makes the site is the trains, which provide a strong visual representation.
Not as strong, however, as the trench that was dug out for the railroad, viewed on a car tour around the site, but never used; both companies were trying to dig as far as they could as fast as they could, and dug well beyond Promontory Point before actually backtracking and lining things up. The unused trench - dug over 140 years ago - remains, an amazing way to see just how much work there was to connect the country even when they weren't trying to deal with the Sierras.
"The transcontinental railroad never really captured my imagination, until visiting the site of the golden spike."
ReplyDeleteFor me, it was reading "Empire Express", by David Bain. A lengthy but fascinating history of the project. My favorite part: when the Big Four of the Central Pacific realized that they'd forgotten to order the spikes to go with all the rails they were planning to lay. :-)