The Lost Spike

By the time this article appears in the Loop, we will be but only a few days away from every true train geek’s favorite national holiday, May 10. This year will mark the one hundred and forty-fifth anniversary of the ceremonial driving of the “Golden Spike” at Promontory Point Summit in the then Utah Territory. This story will end a little differently than what you remember.

As the Transcontinental Railroad was approaching completion, David Hewes – San Francisco contractor and close friend of Central Pacific’s President Leland Stanford – was disheartened when he discovered that no one had prepared anything to commemorate its completion.

Using his own gold, he contracted the W.T. Garatt Foundry of San Francisco to cast a golden spike. Also cast and heavily plated with silver by tool maker Conroy & O’Conner was a maul for the driving of the spike. After Leland Stanford and Union Pacific President Thomas Durant carefully tapped the gold spike into a specially made California laurelwood tie with the silver hammer, the ceremonial spikes were removed (there were four).

The Laurel tie was then replaced with a tie made of pine and four iron spikes to be driven into place with an iron hammer. This was the part of the ceremony that both the mighty men of industry historically took their swings and completely missed the spike.

Thomas Durant didn’t even hit the tie.

A regular railroad worker drove home the final spike which, along with the hammer, was wired to the transcontinental telegraph system. The entire country “listened.”

At 12:47 p.m. on May 10, 1869, W.N. Shilling, a telegrapher for Western Union, tapped out four letters, “D-O-N-E.”

After the hoopla settled down, the artifacts from the ceremony were displayed at various prominent locations for all to see. The golden spike and silver hammer were presented to Leland Stanford and have been on display in Palo Alto, Calif. at Stanford University since 1892. The laurelwood tie ended up at the offices of the Southern Pacific Railroad in San Francisco after the Central Pacific was reorganized in 1890. It was destroyed in the earthquake and fires of 1906. Up ‘til this point, we have been on a fairly straightforward trip on Mr. Wizard’s wayback machine. Then last month I read this story:

“Sometime last night someone attempted to steal the ‘Lost Golden Spike’ at the California State RR Museum in Sacramento.

They broke a glass panel behind the C.P. Huntington locomotive to gain entry and then used a sledge hammer to beat on the spike’s display case in an attempt to crack it open. Unsuccessful, they left the museum without doing any further damage.”

The display case is really a vault, with the spike either up on display behind 1” of polycarbonate glass (bullet proof and then some!) and safely recessed behind several inches of armor-grade steel. The spike is one of two gold spikes made in 1869 for the transcontinental railroad completion ceremony.

Unknown at the time, the jeweler charged with engraving the spike did two. The bill states this, but the thinking at the time was that one bill was for the casting of the spike and the other for engraving the names and the date, May 8, 1869*. The jeweler’s family held onto the second spike until 2005 when the “Lost Spike” emerged, was donated to and is now on display at the California State Railroad Museum.

* — The ceremony actually took place on May 10: the “Lost Spike” has the correct date. The spike that was used at Promontory Point is engraved with May 8, the original anticipated date of the ceremony. After casting, the golden spike was engraved on all four sides and the top. Two sides bore the names of railroad officers and directors. Another side was engraved, “The Pacific Railroad ground broken January 8th 1863 and completed May 8th 1869.” The fourth side was engraved, “May God continue the unity of our country as the railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world. Presented - David Hewes -San Francisco.” The top of the spike was simply engraved, “The Last Spike”.” Let’s all have a happy Golden Spike Day.